Offline and online parental mentalizing in mothers with symptoms of postpartum depression: Examining the association between self‐reported parental reflective functioning and interactional mind‐mindedness

Abstract

Mentalizing is, to a certain extent, considered context specific. However, research on the association between parents’ abilities to reflect upon their infant's mental states outside social interaction (offline) versus during ongoing parent‐infant interaction (online) is currently limited. This study investigated the association between self‐reported offline and online mentalizing in a sample of primarily ethnically Danish mothers (N = 142), with symptoms of postpartum depression, and their 1–11‐month‐old infants. Offline mentalizing was assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire—Infant Version (PRFQ‐I) and online mentalizing was assessed with interactional mind‐mindedness. Ordinal logistic regressions showed that a higher score on the PRFQ‐I prementalizing subscale was negatively related to number of overall mind‐related comments and appropriate mind‐related comments produced by mothers during interaction with their infant. Our results indicate partial overlaps between self‐reported parental reflective functioning and mind‐mindedness, that is, that particularly offline maladaptive mentalizing is associated with lower levels of mentalizing during interaction in mothers with symptoms of depression. Post‐hoc examination of the interaction effect of postpartum depression showed that this association was only evident in mothers with medium to high levels of depression. Findings and implications are discussed.