Within hours of birth, a baby can recognise its mother's eyes, nose andmouth and mirror back the expressions it sees. Smile at an infant andthey smile back.
"But what you find with women with a depressive illness is their facialexpression tends to be flat, so the babies don't smile," explains KarenRobertson, nurse consultant at Greater Glasgow's perinatal mental healthteam, which helps families during pregnancy and their first postnatalyear. "When they're exposed to that for a long time, a stranger cansmile at a baby and they still won't smile back."
Children of women who suffer from a mental illness in the early monthsof their lives are at higher risk of developing it themselves. Studiesas far back as the 1950s show babies are also adversely affected byprolonged separation from their mothers in their early months, as isusually the case for mentally ill women who are treated innon-specialist adult wards.
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