The
Relationship between Lifetime Stress and Prenatal Health Behaviors
Teresa
Smith, B.A.
Did you know?
Did you know that different types of stress, including prenatal
exposure to stress and stress experienced during childhood, increases the
likelihood that women will engage in negative prenatal health behaviors in the
future? Negative prenatal health behavior may include smoking cigarettes or eating
an unhealthy diet. Negative prenatal health behaviors can lead to poor birth
outcomes and negative infant and maternal health. Poor diet and drug use during
pregnancy are associated with low infant birth weight and preterm birth. It is
important that we better understand the relationship between stress and
prenatal health behaviors to address these negative maternal and infant health outcomes.
What does stress have to do with it?
The ecobiodevelopmental
framework suggests that chronic stress over the lifespan changes the brain’s
architecture making it more difficult for individuals to cope with future
stress in a healthy manner. The ecobiodevelopmental
framework highlights the neurological importance of examining health behaviors
and stress through the life course perspective. However, to our knowledge, there is limited information about the
relationship between prenatal health behaviors and the cumulative impact of
stress across the lifespan, also known as lifetime stress. Studies that
examine lifetime stress often use checklists as a way to collect information
about the number of stressful experiences, which incorrectly assumes that all
individuals perceive stress in the same way.
How do we learn more?
Due to the gaps in the literature, we examined the
association between prenatal health behaviors and lifetime stress perceptions,
above and beyond current stress.166 participants were interviewed at one of two
urban hospitals after delivering their first infant. Participants completed a
measure of prenatal health behaviors, current stress, and the Stress and
Adversity Inventory, an innovative measure of lifetime stress, which inquires
about stressful events as well as the perception of those events, also known as
stress severity. It was found that the
perceptions of stress women experience over their lifetime predicts negative
prenatal health behaviors, even after controlling for current stress.
What do we do now?
If we want to mitigate the effects of stress on prenatal
health behaviors, it is important to examine the stress women experience across
their lifespan and their perception of that stress, not just their current
stress. Further, it is critical to implement interventions aimed at decreasing
lifetime stress in childhood and adolescence to ensure positive prenatal health
behaviors as adults. Interventions likes these have the potential to decrease
negative prenatal health behaviors; therefore, decreasing the possibility of
poor birth outcomes related to these behaviors.
Acknowledgements: The author would like to acknowledge
Jennifer Malat, PhD, Farrah Jacquez, PhD, Elaina Johns-Wolfe, MA, and George
Slavich, PhD, who are co-authors on the research article discussed.
