Department of Psychology and the Institute for Society and Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,
Arch Womens Ment Health. 2013 Oct;16(5):411-22. doi: 10.1007/s00737-013-0348-9. Epub 2013 Jun 8.
Mothers who breastfeed typically exhibit lower levels of depressive symptomatology than mothers who do not. However, very few studies have investigated the directionality of this relationship. Of the prospective studies published, all but one focus exclusively on whether maternal depression reduces rates of subsequent breastfeeding. This study again examines this relationship, but also the reverse-that breastfeeding might predict lower levels of later depression. Using multilevel modeling, we investigated the relationship between breastfeeding and self-reported depressive symptomatology in 205 women followed prenatally and at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after birth. Consistent with previous research, women with prenatal depressive symptomatology weaned their infants 2.3 months earlier, on average, than women without such symptomatology. We also found, however, that women who breastfed more frequently at 3 months postpartum showed greater subsequent declines in depressive symptomatology over time compared to women who breastfed less frequently, resulting in lower absolute levels of depressive symptoms by 24 months postpartum, controlling for important confounds. In sum, these findings are consistent with a bidirectional association between breastfeeding and depression, with prenatal depression predicting less breastfeeding soon after birth and breastfeeding predicting declines in maternal depression up to 2 years after birth. We discuss mechanisms that could potentially explain these associations and avenues for future research.
母乳喂养的母亲通常表现出的抑郁症状比不母乳喂养的母亲要低。然而，很少有研究调查这种关系的方向性。已发表的前瞻性研究中，除了一项之外，所有研究都专门关注产后抑郁是否会降低随后母乳喂养的比例。这项研究再次检验了这种关系，但也检验了相反的情况，即母乳喂养可能预示着后期抑郁程度较低。本研究使用多层次建模，对 205 名孕妇及其在产前和产后 3、6、12 和 24 个月进行的随访进行了调查，研究了母乳喂养与自我报告的抑郁症状之间的关系。与先前的研究一致，有产前抑郁症状的女性平均比没有这种症状的女性早断奶 2.3 个月。然而，我们还发现，产后 3 个月母乳喂养频率较高的女性，随着时间的推移，抑郁症状的后续下降幅度更大，与母乳喂养频率较低的女性相比，到产后 24 个月时，抑郁症状的绝对水平更低，同时控制了重要的混杂因素。总之，这些发现与母乳喂养和抑郁之间存在双向关联一致，产前抑郁预示着产后不久母乳喂养的减少，而母乳喂养预示着产后 2 年内母亲抑郁的下降。我们讨论了可能解释这些关联的机制以及未来研究的方向。
