Mentally ill mothers and their children. An epidemiological study of antenatal care consumption, obstetric conditions, and neonatal health.

Antenatal care consumption, obstetric conditions, and neonatal health, were studied retrospectively in all women in the county of Stockholm who had a baby during 1976-77 and also had been admitted to a psychiatric department after the 20th week of pregnancy or within the first postpartum year, and the findings were compared in matched obstetric controls. Fewer index women had had uncomplicated pregnancies than the controls. A positive relationship was found between acute mental illness and pregnancy complications. Delivery complications tended to to be more common in the index group than in controls, but, only in patients with prepartum onset of mental illness. More index women had a history of several previous abortions than the controls. The index women, and especially the addicts, attended the antenatal care clinics significantly less frequently than the controls. The neonatal health of the index children seemed to be more closely correlated with alcohol or drug dependency per se in the mothers than with mental illness.