Caregiving representations in war conditions: Associations with maternal trauma, mental health, and mother-infant interaction.
Infant Ment Health J
; 41(2): 246-263, 2020 03.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32057130
ABSTRACT
Risk features in mothers' caregiving representations remain understudied in dangerous environments where infants most urgently need protective parenting. This pilot study examines the feasibility of a novel coding system for the Parent Development Interview (PDI) interview (ARR, Assessment of Representational Risk) in assessing 50 war-exposed Palestinian mothers' caregiving representations. First, we explored the content and structure of risks in the representations. Second, we examined associations between the high-risk representations, mothers' pre- and postnatal exposure to traumatic war events (TWE), depressive and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and self-rated emotional availability (EA) with their 1-year-old infants. Following three dimensions of high-risk caregiving representations were identified self/dyadic dysregulation, unavailable, and fearful. Mothers' prenatal depressive symptoms were associated with dysregulating and fearful representations, and their postnatal PTSD with fearful representations. TWE were not associated with the high-risk representations. Moreover, mothers of boys reported more fearful representations, and mothers with financial difficulties reported more unavailable representations. TWE and high-risk representations were not associated with EA. However, qualitative analysis of the representations indicated risks in the mother-infant relationship. Further, older mothers and mothers with postnatal PTSD reported lower EA. Cultural variance in caregiving representations and the use of self-report measures among traumatized mothers are discussed.
Key words
Full text:
1
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
/
Caregivers
/
Armed Conflicts
/
Mothers
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Qualitative_research
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
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Female
/
Humans
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Infant
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Male
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Middle aged
/
Pregnancy
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
En
Journal:
Infant Ment Health J
Year:
2020
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Finland