A rope that is not cut at delivery: Mothers' mental suffering causes children's stress

"From birth, the baby begins to establish a relationship with the adult that ensures comfort and survival, neurological development, emotional regulation and response to stress," said the Faculty of Medicine of the University. According to the institution, when the quality of the binding relationships is compromised, mechanisms can be triggered in the child that lead to variations in cortisol levels (stress hormone responsible for controlling sugar levels) in blood and behavioral changes in sleep and appetite.

This study, involving parents and about 100 children attending the Obesity Clinic at Dona Estefânia Hospital in Lisbon, shows a significant correlation between maternal mental state and impaired cortisol levels in children, an association found most often in girls.

The differences between different types of parent-child relationships were also analyzed, highlighting the insecure attachment strategies developed when "the quality of the relationship, which implies the responsiveness and contingent responsiveness of the primary caregiver care, is compromised "

The researcher concluded that girls who presented strategies of an insecure" avoidant "relationship, in which a situation of depression of the mother may make him not so sensitive to certain signs from the child's suffering, they end up not being able to regulate themselves emotionally, "being able to use food to comfort themselves."

"This child interprets that crying is something negative and the delete, the mother is there or because she feels that she has no effect, "reads FMUP's note.

These are children who "rarely ask for help and who try to solve everything by themselves," being also "those who appear least in the consultations," because they " learn that anything that is emotional can not be verbalized. "

According to a child psychiatrist of the hospital Beatriz Ângelo de Loures, In the insecure attachment strategies of the anxiety type, children perceive" that mothers are not always present, but that they can force the maternal response, if they exaggerate their states. "

".

"These are the ones who appear most in the consultation, who ask for help, but in whom associations with stress hormones have not been found," he said [19659010].

While it is necessary to help children to express their feelings in the insecure attachment relationship of the avoidant type, in the anxiety group, it is necessary to help them distinguish "a true pain of what is not. [19659002] The results of this research, developed in the Doctoral Program in Metabolism: Clinic and Experimentation of FMUP and guided by professor Professor Rui Coelho, underline the importance of the quality of the mother-child relationship, family functioning and the mental state of parents and children by studying childhood obesity.

"In this way, protecting their children from excessive stress and disrupting the functioning and involvement of neurophysiological systems, help reduce the risk of obesity in children," adds the researcher

with Lusa