A new report from JAMA Internal Medicine is raising red flags about the state of mental health for mothers across the U.S. Between 2016 and 2023, the percentage of moms rating their mental health as “excellent” plummeted from 38 percent to just 26 percent, according to researchers from Columbia University and the University of Michigan.
The study analyzed data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, which includes responses from nearly 200,000 mothers of children under 18. Most respondents were over the age of 30. It wasn’t just mental health that suffered, fewer women reported “excellent” physical health too, dropping from 28 percent to 24 percent in the same timeframe.
Perhaps more troubling, the percentage of mothers describing their mental health as “fair” or “poor” rose significantly, from 5.5 percent to 9 percent. Researchers emphasized that this downward trend actually began before the COVID-19 pandemic and affected mothers across almost every income and demographic group.
Jamie Daw, a health policy professor at Columbia, pointed out that while the country often focuses on maternal health during pregnancy and the postpartum year, long-term data on moms’ overall well-being has been scarce. This study fills in some of those gaps and highlights a deeper issue.
Experts warn that maternal mental health affects more than just mothers. Poor mental health in parents has been linked to behavioral and developmental struggles in children, making this a growing concern for families and communities nationwide.
