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Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
Published on: June 13, 2021
The interrelationship between pregnancy-specific anxiety and general anxiety across pregnancy: a longitudinal study
A C Huizink1, B Menting, M Oosterman
1Department of Developmental Psychology and .
Background:
High levels of prenatal maternal anxiety - either pregnancy-specific anxiety or general anxiety - may have detrimental effects on both the mother and her child. It is currently unknown how these two different expressions of anxiety influence each other over time during pregnancy.
Aims:
This study aimed to describe the relationship between state, trait and pregnancy-specific anxiety levels across pregnancy.
Methods:
Longitudinal data from three data-waves of a large-scaled sample of nulliparous normal risk pregnant women were used to display associations over time by means of autoregressive and cross-lagged panel models.
Results:
Cross-lagged, cross-time pathways from pregnancy-specific anxiety to state as well as trait anxiety were positively significant, while vice versa the most consistent links were found from trait anxiety to pregnancy-specific anxiety.
Conclusions:
We conclude that pregnancy-specific anxiety and general anxiety appear to influence each other over time, resulting in heightened anxiety for some soon-to-be mothers.
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