DAD’S depression could be linked to baby’s colic: new Dutch study

Colicky infants who cry excessively may be more common in children of depressed men, Dutch researchers said Monday.

Some infants may cry inconsolably for hours, a well-known and stressful problem for parents. Colic — widely defined as crying three hours a day for at least three days a week — usually gets better on its own between three and five months of age.

In extreme cases, frustration may lead a parent or caregiver to shake an infant, which can cause irreversible brain damage.

In the July 1 issue of the journal Pediatrics, Mijke van den Berg, a child psychiatrist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues reported a 1.29 times higher risk of excessive infant crying per standard deviation increase in a father’s depressive symptoms during pregnancy.

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