Mother's mental health tied to child's development

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Evaluating the emotional health and social connectedness of pregnant women may help determine if their children will need extra help to meet developmental goals later on, Canadian researchers say.

If children get this assistance early, there's a good chance they will do just fine, Dr. Suzanne C. Tough of the University of Calgary in Alberta, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

But Tough and her team found that more than half of the three-year-olds in their study who were identified as being at high risk for developmental problems had never been referred for assessment to see if they actually did have speech and language delays.

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