الفهرس 
: Maternal Risk Factors of MalnutritionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Mother‟s appropriateness as a caregiver directly depends on her skills or abilities, deriving from a close relationship with her personal, social, demographic and mental status.
Aim of the study was studying the role of maternal social and psychological factors as substantial risk factors for malnutrition among preschool children by determine the frequency of anxiety, depression and stress among mothers of both malnourished and eutrophic preschool children ,to find out whether if these mental problems among mothers could be risk factors for malnutrition in preschool children and to determine the socio-demographic factors (as employment, family income, housing, family problems ……etc) related to the occurrences of maternal anxiety, depression and stress.
A case-control study was designed including 350 mothers of eutrophic preschool children as controls and 350 mothers of malnourished preschool children as cases who agree to participate, with the exclusion of mothers whose children suffered from any congenital disease, crippling disease, low birth weight, prematurity or malnutrition in first year of life. Children of the participants were assessed for their growth indicators measures according to WHO
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charts applied in IMCI program, an interviewed questionnaire with the mother of the child was done to collect data about Socio-demographic and occupational characteristics of mothers as age, educational level, housing, income, smoking & employment and scales with scoring system to measure, depression and stress using depression, anxiety and stress.
Mothers of malnourished children showed high scores of severe and extreme depression, anxiety and stress. Moreover levels of sever and extreme stress were higher among single mothers in cases group compared to married mothers in the same group. The research identified considerable socio-demographic and occupational risk factors among cases which augment the depression, anxiety and depression impact including, rural residency, single motherhood (divorce-widow-separated), smoking, sharing residence and absence of the husband as for personal, demographic and social factors, and for occupational status of both parents’ , there was more working mothers suffered from having irregular work and work problem. Higher rates of unemployment, independent work, non-professional and merchant work were reported among their husbands.
The results showed among children of cases higher rates intake of other foods (milk-yogurt only) for feeding, number of meals, feeding processes done by the mother
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herself and not offering the child a specially prepared meal for him.
Anthropometric measures of those children showed that there were a high percentage of stunting and severe stunting among all age groups,the highest percentage of obesity andoverweight was among children 12 to 24 and among children 24-36 months respectively and while the highest percentage of wasting and severe wasting was among children 48 months and above. A higher percentage of underweight among children was in ages 36- and 48 and above months compared to other groups.
Recommendations to promote better health for both mother and child:
Detection and treatment of CMDs at the primary care level.
Promotion of maternal mental health is important for improvement of child nutrition.
Addition of preventive actions (strengthening social support for women who have specific risk factors such as widows, divorced, live in poverty,etc….) within community development programs.
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Existing community-based nutrition programs and maternal and child health care programs which are abundant in Egypt, can usefully add maternal mental health to their agenda.
Future research in Egypt should consider whether poor maternal mental health is also associated with other child health outcomes such as physical or mental morbidity.