{
  "id": 10756043,
  "title": "Prenatal exposure to maternal depression and antidepressants and neurodevelopmental outcomes: A population cohort study",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/prenatal-exposure-to-maternal-depression-and-antidepressants-and",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-29T14:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PLOS Medicine",
    "slug": "plos-medicine",
    "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004658"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A recent study examined the long-term impacts of antidepressant use during pregnancy on the neurodevelopmental outcomes of school-aged children. Researchers analyzed data from 167,447 children born in Wales between 2009 and 2016, tracking them until 2022. The study focused on children exposed to untreated depression during pregnancy, those with treated depression, and those exposed to antidepressant medication without a recorded depression diagnosis.\n\nThe findings revealed that both maternal depression and antidepressant exposure were associated with an increased risk of special educational needs (SEN) in children. Specifically, children exposed to both maternal depression and antidepressants had the highest predicted probability of all-cause SEN (26.5 per 100 children), while those without depression or antidepressant exposure had the lowest risk (20.0 per 100 children). Even without maternal depression, antidepressant exposure alone was linked to a 26.3 per 100 children probability of SEN.\n\nThe study also found that antidepressant exposure was linked to a 6.3% increase in SEN risk for children whose mothers had untreated depression and a 2.9% increase for children whose mothers had treated depression. When examining individual antidepressant classes, tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) showed significant differences in the absolute risk of SEN when comparing treated and untreated depression.\n\nHowever, the study acknowledges several limitations, such as potential confounding factors like depression severity and indication, as women prescribed antidepressants may represent a more severely depressed group. Overall, the research suggests that prenatal exposure to antidepressants may confer a small additional absolute risk of SEN, though this could partly result from confounding by the severity of the mother's depression. Further research is necessary to clarify these associations.",
  "summary": "by Saraid McIlvride, Neha Rao, Sarjit Singh, Scott M. Nelson, Jill P. Pell, Michael Fleming Background The long-term effects of antidepressant use in pregnancy on child neurodevelopment are unclear; meanwhile antidepressant use in pregnancy is increasing. We aimed to clarify associations between prenatal maternal depression and/or antidepressant exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes in…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}