Stability and Continuity of Women’s Core Beliefs and Psychopathological Symptoms from Pregnancy to One Year Postpartum

Abstract

Unhealthy core beliefs are theorized to be stable constructs throughout the life-span, but no research to date, outside of the context of clinical intervention, has addressed this claim over a period of greater than 6 weeks. This study explores the stability and continuity of core beliefs and psychopathological symptoms in a group of women over a major life event and for 1 year subsequently. Eighty-seven women completed measures assessing their core beliefs and psychopathological symptoms during pregnancy and at 6 and 12 months after giving birth. General maternal psychopathological symptoms significantly decreased across the group between pregnancy and 6 months postpartum, and between pregnancy and 1 year, but showed evidence of stability in the ranks of individuals across time. The majority of core beliefs remained both stable and continuous throughout this period of major transition. These findings generally support the theoretical contention that core beliefs are relatively stable and continuous self-constructs.

Early maladaptive schemas in children: Development and validation of the schema inventory for children

“…Adequate test-retest coefficients were found, especially at the factor score level, indicating that the schema constructs were stable over a period of four weeks. This is consistent with findings of studies on the stability of schemas in adults (Blissett & Farrow, 2007;Rijkeboer et al, 2005). Yet, conclusions should be made with caution, since the time frame of our study was rather short.…”

Dysfunctional beliefs towards motherhood and postpartum depressive and anxiety symptoms: Uncovering the role of experiential avoidance

“…First, our results show that more dysfunctional beliefs toward motherhood related with others’ judgments and with maternal responsibility were associated not only with higher depressive symptoms, congruently with prior research (Fonseca & Canavarro, ; Sockol et al., ; Wittkowski et al., ), but also with higher anxiety symptoms, suggesting that dysfunctional beliefs toward motherhood may be conceptualized as a broad cognitive vulnerability for postpartum psychological disorders (anxiety and depression) and not only for postpartum depression. Dysfunctional beliefs related to maternal responsibility and to the judgment of others seem to have underpinned the self‐imposed high standards of performance (the myth of perfect motherhood ) in the maternal role (Blissett & Farrow, ), which may translate into the women's conditioning of their personal value as a mother to their performance and the fear of failure and of others’ criticisms.…”

“…beliefs related to maternal responsibility and to the judgment of others seem to have underpinned the self-imposed high standards of performance (the myth of perfect motherhood) in the maternal role (Blissett & Farrow, 2007), which may translate into the women's conditioning of their personal value as a mother to their performance and the fear of failure and of others' criticisms.…”

Relationships between early maladaptive schemas and psychosocial developmental task resolution

“…According to Young (1999), EMS are stable unless treated. Preliminary research gives support to this assertion (Blissett & Farrow, 2007;Riso et al, 2006). However, not all patients in the sample received treatment between T1 and T2.…”