Offspring of women with nonorganic psychosis: mother‐infant interaction and fear of strangers during the first year of life

Abstract

Mother-infant interaction characteristics at six ages during the first year of life were studied in relationship to the development of the infant's fear of strangers (FOS) during the first year. Among 46 offspring of women with psychosis history, a failure to develop the expected FOS was associated with antecedent negative qualitative aspects of interaction such as increased maternal tension, reduced harmony in feeding and increased infant crying. Among 80 low-risk control infants, a failure to develop FOS was associated with an antecedent quantitative reduction in social contact within the mother-infant pair. At a case level, an absence of FOS overlapped little with anxious attachment to the mother, and these two developmental phenomena bear partially different relationships to the mother-infant interaction characteristics.

Mental disease postpartum - Sociability, stranger wariness and mother's reports of approach-withdrawal behavior in infants at ten months

“…Only a few studies have taken a special interest in reactions to strangers of infants in risk-groups on the basis of maternal mental illness (14,15,18). The studies, which exist, point to the fact that children with mentally ill mothers show less fear towards strangers than children with healthy mothers.…”

“…This has been demonstrated in a longitudinal study of the offspring of women with non-organic psychosis (14,15). In this study, mother-infant interaction was more inadequate and negative in cases where the infant had not shown any fear of strangers during the first year of life (14).…”

“…Based upon previous research, we hypothesized that offsprings of women hospitalized because of mental disease postpartum would show less fear of stranger (14,15) and less sociability (18) in comparison to infants in the somatic and healthy samples.…”

“…The studies, which exist, point to the fact that children with mentally ill mothers show less fear towards strangers than children with healthy mothers. As methods of measurement the authors have used the ''fear of stranger'' situation (14,15) or the ''sociability'' situation (18). In both situations the infant's behavior is studied.…”

“…Thus, the reaction to a stranger of infants to mentally ill mothers may result in absence of fear of stranger (14,15) and less sociability (18). In the present study, infants at ten months of age were tested with two well-known instruments, the ''sociability situation'' (16,17) and the ''fear of stranger situation'' (19,2).…”