History of serious mental illness linked to stillborn babies

New research has revealed that women with a history of serious mental illness are much more likely to have babies that are stillborn or die within the first month of life.

The researchers from the Centre for Women's Mental Health at Manchester University say the risk of stillbirth and newborn deaths from any cause, was at least twice as high for mothers admitted with a serious psychiatric illness than for women with no such history.

The researchers studied almost 1.5 million births in Denmark between 1973 and 1998, including 7,021 stillbirths and found that the chances of stillborn or newborn death from all causes were greater for babies whose mothers had a serious mental-health illness.

Lead researcher Dr Kathryn Abel, along with Danish colleagues at Arhus University, says the risk of stillbirth for women with schizophrenia and women with affective disorders, was twice as high as for healthy mothers and women with other psychotic illnesses, including mood-affective disorders, manic depression and drug and alcohol addiction, were also shown to have a much greater risk of stillborn and newborn deaths.

Dr Abel says the risk of stillbirth due to complications during delivery among women with drug and alcohol problems was more than double that of healthy women and women with affective disorders were more than twice as likely to give birth to babies with congenital abnormalities, leading to stillbirth.

Dr Abel says for most causes of death, offspring of women with schizophrenia had no greater risk of stillbirth or neonatal death than other psychiatrically-ill mothers but the fact that the link between the cause of death and the illness of the mother varies, suggests that factors other than the mental disorder itself are involved.

Dr Abel says lifestyle factors such as smoking and poor diet, less antenatal care and poverty can also increase the chances of complication during childbirth.