High quality daycare may lessen the risk of clinical depression and depressive symptoms later in life in children from a poor or unstable home environment.
When I tout the benefits of daycare or preschool in articles, I usually describe how daycare promotes school readiness, and stress the importance of young children learning to share, interact, and socialize with other children and non-parental adults.
But did you know that high quality daycare might also be linked to the quality of mental health later in life?
A fascinating article in Reuters News titled “Good Daycare Boosts Poor Kids' Later Mental Health” discussed a study conducted to observe depressive symptoms in 104 21 year old adults.
“The young men and women had, in infancy, been randomly assigned to full-time daycare up to five years of age, or a comparison "control" group. Researchers visited the homes of all of the children and used a standardized scoring system to gauge the quality of home life”.
According to the study, the worse a child’s quality of home life (i.e., poverty or unstable environment) the more the child is at risk for depression later in life.
However, children with a low quality of home life that were placed in a daycare where the staff was well paid, and where there was “developmentally appropriate education and stimulation” and a high level of interaction and play, were less likely to be diagnosed with clinical depression. These children also had less depressive symptoms than those children who didn’t attend the daycare program.
So what do we take away from this? As a parent, no matter what the quality of your child’s home life, you must recognize the importance of selecting daycare where the staff is appropriately educated and the rate of staff turnover is low. This usually helps promote a safe, family-like environment.
For me this study only reinforces how important it is to closely evaluate the daycare program to make sure that the educational focus is not performance driven. Rather, children under the age of two should be allowed to learn naturally through play and interaction.
For more information on assessing daycare, please see my article How to Select a Daycare Provider.
