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Updated: Aug 31, 2026
Using Chronic Social Stress to Model Postpartum Depression in Lactating Rodents
Published on: June 10, 2013
Parental depression: animal models of an adverse life event
D Jeffrey Newport1, Zachary N Stowe, Charles B Nemeroff
1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. dnewpor@emory.edu
Insights
Parental depression adversely impacts offspring development, as shown in animal studies. This research highlights the need to consider infant well-being in the psychiatric care of depressed parents.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Parental depression is a significant public health concern.
- The impact of parental mental illness on child development is a critical area of research.
- Preclinical studies offer insights into the mechanisms of this impact.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review preclinical research on the adverse effects of parental depression on offspring development.
- To emphasize the implications of this research for the psychiatric care of depressed parents.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of the past 40 years.
- Focus on laboratory animal studies.
- Analysis of studies on parental stress and parenting deficits.
Main Results:
- Disrupted parenting in animals leads to persistent, detrimental biobehavioral effects on offspring.
- Offspring exhibit behaviors similar to human anxiety and affective disorders.
- Consistent findings of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis hyperresponsivity in offspring.
Conclusions:
- Parental mental illness can be the first adverse life event for a child.
- Risk-benefit assessments for parental psychiatric care must include infant impact.
- Preclinical data on risks to offspring should inform clinical decisions for parents with mental illness.
Objective:
This article reviews findings in preclinical research on the adverse impact of parental depression on the development of offspring, with emphasis on the relevance of this research for the psychiatric care of depressed parents.
Method:
The authors reviewed literature from the last 40 years reporting laboratory animal studies pertaining to the persistent effects of parental stress and parenting deficits on neurobehavioral and neurobiological development in offspring.
Results:
Animal studies indicate that disrupted parenting produces a persistent, deleterious biobehavioral impact on offspring. Stressors, including maternal separation, variable foraging, and a variety of prenatal maternal challenges, produce offspring behaviors reminiscent of the cardinal features of anxiety and affective disorders. The stress paradigms also uniformly produce persistent hyperresponsivity in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity secondary to hypersecretion of corticotropin-releasing hormone. These findings bear striking similarities to findings for stress-related illnesses in humans, including major depression.
Conclusions:
Data from research on animal parenting reinforce the idea that parental mental illness may pose the first adverse life event for a child. A thorough risk-benefit assessment for the psychiatric care of parents of young children must consider the impact on the infant of exposure both to treatment and to parental illness. Preclinical data regarding the risk to offspring posed by untreated parental mental illness should be incorporated into clinical decision making in the treatment of parents with mental illness.
