Introduction: The benefits of breastfeeding are innumerable may reduce the risk of behavior and developmental problems among children.
Aim: To evaluate the effect of breastfeeding on behavioral and mental health disorders of school-age children.
Patients and methods: This was a case-control comparative study that was carried out on a group of children aged from 6 to 12 years old divided into two groups; patient group 50 children that were diagnosed with behavioral and mental health disorders according to DSM 5 criteria of diagnosis were taken from outpatient psychiatry clinic of Al-Zahraa Hospital University during the period from March 2020 to September 2020 & a control group apparently healthy children with no history of psychological manifestations matched in number, age and sex.
Result: The mean age (8.4 ± 2.2 years), 15 were female (30.0%) and 35 were male (70.0%) with a highest percentage of attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) by (72.0%) followed by obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (24.0%), learning disorder (10.0%) and conduct disorder (CD) (2.0%) among the patient studied children. The majority of cases (29) were Mixed fed (58.0%), (11) were artificially fed (22.0%), and (10) were breastfed (20.0%) and there was a highly statistically significant difference between artificial (bottle) feeding and mixed feeding regarding behavioral disease as attention deficit hyperactive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder were highly significant with p-value > 0.001 Also, there was a highly statistically significant difference between the duration of breastfeeding ≤ 6 months and ADHD and OCD.
Conclusions: Breastfeeding has been documented to be positively associated to behavioral and mental health disorders depending more on the duration of breastfeeding, rather than the decision to breastfeed.
Keywords: Behavioral, Mental disorders, Breast feeding, Artificial feeding, Mixed feeding