Babies who persistently struggle with sleep in their first year are THREE TIMES more likely to have anxiety by age four
- Babies who have difficulty sleeping are also twice as likely to have depression
- Scientists in Australia tracked 1,500 babies through childhood
- Higher rates of mental illness were found in those who slept badly as babies
Babies who persistently struggle to sleep in their first year are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression in childhood, research suggests.
One in five babies have sleep difficulties in their first 12 months – such as frequent waking or trouble falling asleep.
These babies are three times as likely to suffer with emotional problems by the age of four, researchers found.
They are also more than twice as likely to have a clinically defined emotional disorder – such as depression, separation anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder – by the age of 10.
The scientists – from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia – said babies who struggle to sleep should be carefully monitored for mental health problems in childhood.
Babies who persistently struggle with sleep in first year more likely to have child anxiety
The team tracked 1,500 babies for the first year of their life – with mothers answering a detailed questionaire about their babies’ sleeping patterns at three, six nine and 12 months.
Each baby was given a score depending on their sleep patterns, and at the end of their first year put in one of three categories.
Some 19 per cent were found to have had ‘persistent and severe sleep difficulties’, including frequent waking at night and trouble falling asleep without help from a parent.
Another 56 per cent had ‘moderate, fluctuating sleep problems’ and 25 per cent had ‘settled sleep’.
The babies were tracked throughout childhood and their mental health was assessed at the ages of four and ten.
The researchers, whose findings are published in the BMJ Archives of Disease in Childhood journal, found those with persistent and severe sleep problems were 2.7 times more likely as other babies to suffer symptoms of emotional problems when they were four years old.
And they were 2.4 times as likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for an emotional disorder by the time they were ten.
These disorders include separation anxiety, social phobia, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, bipolar, hyperactivity and defiance disorder.
The scientists wrote: ‘Persistent disturbed sleep during infancy may be an early indicator of a child’s heightened susceptibility to later mental health difficulties – in particular, anxiety problems.
‘Families reporting persistent infant sleep problems require enhanced support.
‘Infants with persistent severe sleep problems should be monitored for emerging mental health difficulties during childhood.’