British and Canadian researchers have claimed that babies who are underweight at birth are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety in adult life.
Scientists think that adverse conditions in the uterus that interfere with the growth of a baby can also cause differences in the brain.
Such information has been the result of the study conducted at the University of Alberta in Great Britain, after studying the records of 4600 Britons born in 1946.
"We found that even people with mild symptoms of anxiety or depression during their lifetime were smaller babies than those who had better mental health," says Dr. Colman, director of the research. Although the study only took medical records as evidence and did not examine a possible cause, it states that it is possible that hormones from a stressed mother pass directly to the placenta.
One of the surprises they have found in the study is that people who had worse mental health during their life, had also presented a delay in the stages of development, such as standing up or starting to walk. These acquisitions were later than those with better mental health.
