Max: Is Depression "Contagious"?

Postpartum Depression Epidemic Affects More than Just Mom

The consequences of depression inevitably reach beyond the mother. In a fog of sadness, a mother often lacks the emotional energy to relate appropriately to her baby. Overwhelming grief prevents her from properly perceiving a child’s smiles, cries, gestures and other attempts to communicate with her. Getting no response from mom, the child quits trying to relate to her. Thus, three-month-old infants of depressed mothers look at their mothers less often and show fewer signs of positive emotion than do babies of mentally healthy moms.

In fact, infants of depressed mothers display something akin to learned helplessness, a phenomenon University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman and his colleagues described in the 1960s. In Seligman’s experiments, an animal would conclude that a situation was hopeless after repeatedly failing to overcome it—and then remain passive even when it could effect change. A similar passivity characterizes depression. “Sometimes the infants mirror their mother’s depressive behavior,” Reck says.