Pregnant mothers' mental health is crucial to the future of their babies – Professor David Price

About a quarter of us suffer mental health problems every year. The economic burden is massive, estimated globally in the trillions of US dollars.
Developing brain cells can be vulnerable to external factors such as maternal stress during pregnancy (Picture: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)Developing brain cells can be vulnerable to external factors such as maternal stress during pregnancy (Picture: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
Developing brain cells can be vulnerable to external factors such as maternal stress during pregnancy (Picture: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

Treatment is notoriously difficult, prompting the question of how we might limit our chances of falling ill in the first place. In answering this, we should bear in mind that the origins of many mental health disorders can be traced back to events that occur before birth, placing the unborn brain centre-stage.

The developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert (1929-2021) is quoted as saying that “it is not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation that is truly the most important time in your life”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

At gastrulation, you were a three-week-old, one-millimetre-long embryo, you were going through the biggest shape-change of your life and your brain was just starting to form.

Over the following weeks, your brain quickly accelerated its growth, eventually adding about a quarter of a million new brain cells every minute. What made sure that all went according to plan?

It is often assumed that a genetic blueprint provides the instructions needed to build a foetal brain. Of course, genes matter, but they are only part of the story.

Read More
70% of new mothers experience mental health issues during or after pregnancy

After all, there are only about 25,000 of them and the brain contains about 100 billion cells communicating with each other in highly specific ways through about 100 trillion connections.

What’s more, genes just code for the production of other molecules, such as proteins. On their own they do not provide enough information to tell each brain cell how to grow and connect up.

Additional information comes from brain cells themselves as they are made. They contribute instructions in the form of signalling molecules, which are detected by other cells and guide the way in which they grow.

But as we know only too well, signalling of any sort can be subject to interference. Developing brain cells are vulnerable to external factors that might induce them to develop sub-optimally. If a lot of cells are affected, the brain they are constructing might end up at greater risk of developing mental health problems later in life.

What are these potentially harmful external factors? There are plenty of well-documented examples, such as too much alcohol or too little folic acid in the diet, but a more widespread and insidious one is coming to light: maternal stress.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There is growing evidence that stress can alter the mother’s production of signals – in the form of hormones – that have a negative effect on the way the unborn brain forms.

While research is increasing our understanding of the risks posed for the unborn brain by factors such as maternal stress, we already know enough to persuade us that supporting good mental and physical health in pregnancy is likely to be at least doubly beneficial.

Not only will it directly help mothers, but it will very likely improve the future mental health prospects of their unborn children, which will surely benefit us all.

David Price is a professor of developmental neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This article expresses his own views. The RSE is Scotland's national academy, bringing great minds together to contribute to the social, cultural and economic well-being of Scotland. Find out more at rse.org.uk and @RoyalSocEd.

Related topics:

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.