Emotional availability in infant psychiatry

Abstract

In a child psychiatric population, 68 mother-child pairs were observed, with children ranging in age from 6 weeks to 3 years 10 months. The children were diagnosed using the Zero to Three DC 0-3 guidelines (Zero-to-Three, 1998). Each dyad also was rated in terms of the intensity of recommended therapeutic measures upon intake at our clinic. Following videotaping of parent-child interactions, the dyads were rated for emotional availability using the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS; Biringen, Robinson, & Emde, 1998). The group with feeding disorders showed the lowest EAS ratings. The group with regulation disorders (sleeping and crying disorders) had the highest ratings followed by the group with externalizing disorders (motor disorganized and/or aggressive behavior) and attachment disorders. Further, the lower the EAS ratings, the higher the intensity of recommended treatments for the family. These findings indicate the importance of standardized observing of parent-child interactions in infant psychiatric disorders. Some clinical impressions regarding the work with the EAS also are described.

Play and emotional availability in young children with Down syndrome

“…So far the EAS has been mostly applied to typically developing children, although the scales and the construct of dyadic emotional availability are suitable for assessing and understanding dyadic interactions . Recently investigators have applied the EAS to clinical populations (Wiefel, Wollenweber, Oepen, Lenz, & Lehmkuhl, 2005), and guidelines for the use of the scales with children with disabilities have been provided by the authors of the EAS . Two independent coders were first trained on the EAS to obtain satisfactory interrater reliability with one another and with one of the authors of the EAS.…”

Gastroesophageal reflux disease and the mother-infant relationship

“…Feeding observation videotapes were scored by observers using the EA system, a tool that has an established research base. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] 2.3 Measures 2.3.1 Gastroesophageal reflux questionnaire-revised Mothers completed the Infant Gastroesophageal Reflux Questionnaire-Revised (I-GERQ-R) [2] to assess GERD in infants. The I-GERQ-R consists of 12 questions addressing the symptom cluster for GERD identified in the literature.…”

“…In children 3 weeks through 3.5 years, EA scores discriminated between feeding, regulation (sleeping and crying), externalizing disorders, and attachment (p < .05) with lowest scores for feeding and regulation. [25] In addition to the 6 EA dimensions described above, the EA system now also includes the Emotional Attachment and Emotional Availability Clinical Screener [16] (EA2-CS), which is rated on a 100-point dimensional scale, that is divided into four zones that correspond conceptually to attachment categories. The four zones include Emotionally Available (81-100), Complicated Emotional Availability (61-70), Emotionally Unavailable/Detached (41-60), and Problematic/Disturbed (1-40).…”

Diagnostik und Klassifikation von Verhaltensauffälligkeiten bei Säuglingen und Kleinkindern von 0-5 Jahren

“…Es soll die bestehenden Klassifikationssysteme DSM-IV und ICD-10 nicht ersetzen, sondern ergänzen. Es ist in seiner ersten Version inzwischen in mehrere Sprachen übersetzt und wird derzeit weltweit evaluiert (Dunitz et al 1996;Frankel et al 2004;Keren et al 2001Keren et al , 2003Maestro et al 2002;Maldonado-Durán et al 2003;Wiefel et al 2005 Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht (2007) standardisierte und videodokumentierte Interaktionsdiagnostik. Eine vollständige Untersuchung erfordert in der Regel drei bis fünf Sitzungen von je 45 Minuten Dauer.…”

“…In einem special issue "DC: 0-3" des Infant Mental Health Journals und in einer eigenen empirischen Arbeit sind von verschiedenen internationalen Arbeitsgruppen evaluative Vergleiche zwischen den Systemen vorgenommen worden Cesari et al 2003;Maldonado-Durán et al 2003;Wiefel et al 2005).…”