Moderators and mediators of a maternal depression treatment study: Impact of maternal trauma and parenting on child outcomes

摘要

Objective: Treatment of maternal depression with psychotherapy has been shown to confer indirect benefits to school-age offspring with psychiatric disorders. The current study sought to understand mechanisms by which improvement in depressed mothers, with and without histories of trauma and treated with psychotherapy, produce changes in children who struggle with psychiatric illnesses themselves. We hypothesized that maternal history of childhood trauma would moderate the relationship between maternal and child outcomes and that increased positive and decreased negative parenting behaviors would mediate the relationship between maternal and child outcomes. We also examined whether maternal history of trauma would moderate the mediational effects of parenting behaviors.