Maternal mental health and child problem behaviours: disentangling the role of depression and borderline personality dysfunction.

Background: It is not known whether associations between child problem behaviours and maternal depression can be accounted for by comorbid borderline personality disorder (BPD) dysfunction.

Aim: To examine the contributions of maternal depression and BPD symptoms to child problem behaviours.

Method: Depression trajectories over the first-year postpartum were generated using repeated measurement from a general population sample of 997 mothers recruited in pregnancy. In a stratified subsample of 251, maternal depression and BPD symptoms were examined as predictors of child problem behaviours at 2.5 years.

Results: Child problem behaviours were predicted by a high maternal depression trajectory prior to the inclusion of BPD symptoms. This association was no longer significant after the introduction of BPD symptoms.

Conclusions: Risks for child problem behaviours currently attributed to maternal depression may arise from more persistent and pervasive difficulties found in borderline personality dysfunction.

Declaration of interest: None.

Copyright and usage: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017, this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.