In recent years, there has been a significant decline in self-reported mental health among mothers in the United States, according to a new study led by Jamie Daw, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University.
Dr. Daw and her co-authors from the University of Michigan examined data on nearly 200,000 mothers who participated in the National Survey of Children’s Health between 2016 and 2013. Over the study period, the share of mothers who reported excellent mental health dropped from 38 percent in 2016 to 26 percent in 2023. Furthermore, the share of mothers who rated their mental health as fair or poor rose by 3.5 percentage points from 2016 to 2023.
Similarly, excellent physical health among mothers in the United States declined over the study period, from 28 percent in 2016 to 24 percent in 2023. The study also uncovered some socioeconomic disparities in maternal health, with single mothers, those with lower educational attainment, and those with publicly insured children being significantly more likely to report fair or poor mental and physical health. Additionally, mothers reported consistently worse health status than fathers who participated in the national survey.
“Our findings are supportive of the claim made by some scholars that maternal mortality may be a canary in the coal mine for women’s health more broadly,” the authors write. Going forward, they believe “addressing the rising population-level rates of poor maternal mental health both during and beyond the perinatal period should be a central focus of policy efforts to improve maternal and child health in the U.S.”