Maternal mental health and child nutritional status in an urban slum in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study

Poor mental health may diminish a mother’s capacity to adequately care for her child, resulting in a negative impact on the child’s nutrition. This study aims to determine the association between maternal mental health and child nutritional status in a poor urban population in Bangladesh. We carried out a cross-sectional study among 264 mother-child pairs in an urban slum area of Bangladesh. The Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20 (SRQ-20) was used to assess maternal mental health. An SRQ-20 score ≥7 was considered a common mental disorder (CMD). Anthropometric measurements were performed to assess nutritional status of the children. The prevalence of maternal CMD was 46.2%. Maternal CMD was associated with poorer child feeding practice (p<0.001), poorer hygiene practice (p<0.001), poorer preventive care service use (p = 0.016), and suffering from diarrheal diseases (p = 0.049). The prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight in children was 44.3%, 18.2% and 33.7%, respectively. A poorer child feeding practice was associated with wasting (p = 0.004) and underweight (p<0.001) but not with stunting. Poorer hygiene practices and suffering from diarrheal diseases were associated with stunting and underweight, but not with wasting. In multivariable analysis, maternal CMD was associated with child wasting (adjusted odds ratio, aOR = 2.25, 95% CI = 1.15–4.43). The association between maternal CMD and child underweight found in the bivariate analysis was attenuated and no longer statistically significant after multivariable analysis (aOR = 1.77, 95% CI = 0.94–3.33). No statistically significant association was observed between maternal CMD and stunting in this study (aOR = 1.46, 95% CI = 0.84–2.54). Maternal mental health affects nutritional status of the children where child feeding practice, hygiene practice and preventive care use might play a role. Interventions to address maternal mental health in child nutrition programs might improve child nutritional status.