Citation

Isosävi S, Diab SY, Qouta S, Kangaslampi S, Sleed M, Kankaanpää S, Puura K, Punamäki RL. Infant Ment. Health J. 2020; 41(2): 246-263.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/imhj.21841

PMID

unavailable

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.

Language: en

Keywords

caregiving representations; emotional availability; mental health; pre- and postnatal; war trauma