Maternal Mental Health Spillovers From Child Illness and Disability: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

Objectives There is growing recognition of the consequences of a person’s health and illness experience for the health and wider welfare of those close to them. However, estimation of these health spillovers is challenging. This study adopts a longitudinal approach to examine maternal mental health spillovers associated with various forms of child illness and disability. Methods Dynamic panel models are used in estimating maternal mental health spillovers related to 7 subcategories of chronic child illness and disability. In particular, we use longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Ireland study and a system generalized method of moments approach. We also consider heterogeneity in these spillovers by the severity of the child’s illness/disability and by household deprivation. Results We find that a child’s experience of chronic nervous system conditions and chronic mental and behavioral disorders are associated with 10.8 and 5.1 percentage point increases in the probability of maternal depression, respectively. Similar associations were not observed for other health conditions. Spillover magnitude is also found to be strongly related to illness/disability severity. Finally, subsample analyses reveal a larger association between severe child illness and maternal depression among deprived households. Conclusions This analysis, in observing health spillovers related to certain disease categories but not others, draws further attention to their context specificity. Our findings also further corroborate calls for inclusion of caregiver and family member outcomes in the economic evaluation of child health services and support consensus guidelines for collection of these outcomes alongside patient outcomes in clinical trials.