Can stress in the womb lead to mental resilience later in life?

(Frontiers) Maternal stress during or after pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with subsequent psychiatric problems and non-coding 'epigenetic' DNA changes during childhood. Published in Frontiers in Genetics, a study now shows that in high-violence communities where children experience abuse of their mother both during AND after pregnancy, psychiatric problems appear to be less frequent - and a different, potentially protective, pattern of epigenetic changes emerges.