Background: Most societies believe that a mother's psychological state can influence her unbom baby. Stressful events during pregnancy have been consistently associaiea wim mi elevated risk of low birthweight, prematurity and schizophrenia. Such events during the first trimester have also been associated with risk of congenital malformations Objectives: To investigate the association between maternal exposure to severe life events and risk prematurity, reduced infant birthweight and schizophrenia in the offspring. The project focuses on timing of the exposure in relation to pregnancy. Conclusions: Mothers who were exposed to severe adverse life events antenatally have babies with significantly lower birthweight and more likely to be premature. Babies who were exposed to severe life events in the first trimester are more likely to nave schizophrenia later in their life.

Introduction: Prenatal maternal depression is associated with an increased risk of psychopathology in childhood. The understanding of the mechanisms underlying this association is limited. Further, despite high rates of prenatal depression in the developing world, no research investigating this issue exists from these settings. Objectives: The primary objectives of this thesis are to study the association between prenatal maternal depression and the following early offspring outcomes in a non-smoking, non-alcohol consuming prenatal sample from rural, South India: Foetal stress responsivity, measured through foetal heart rate (FHR). Infant stress responsivity, measured through infant cortisol response to immunisation. Infant temperament. Methods: 194 pregnant women from Solur, India were assessed for depression. The first 67 mothers with elevated symptoms of prenatal depression and the first 66 controls underwent FHR monitoring to study foetal stress responsivity. 58 mother-infant dyads returned at 1.5-3 months post birth. Infant salivary cortisol was measured before and after immunisation. Information on infant temperament and maternal postnatal depression (PND) was also collected. Results: Twenty nine mothers (14.9%) met a diagnosis of major depression during pregnancy while 67 (34.5%) had elevated symptoms of prenatal depression. Whilst there were no linear association between prenatal depression and foetal responsivity, a curvilinear (U shaped) association existed with the foetuses of mothers with very high and very low levels of prenatal depression having elevated stress responses compared to those with moderate levels of prenatal depression. Prenatal depression predicted infant cortisol responsivity independent of PND (B=13.08, p=0.02).The relationship between infant cortisol responsivity and prenatal depression was also U shaped. There was no association between prenatal depression and infant temperament. Conclusions: This is the first study from the developing world investigating the relationship between prenatal depression and offspring outcomes. It provides evidence suggestive of the programming influence of prenatal depression on the developing offspring.