Infant Mental Health Journal最新文献

This study investigated associations between infant separation distress and preschool behavior problems and examined the mediating effects of parenting self-efficacy and positive parenting on these associations. Participants were 117 young Chinese children and their families. At 14 months, infant separation distress was observed in the Strange Situation Procedure and reported by mothers using the Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment. Mothers reported on their parenting self-efficacy and positive parenting at 38 and 61 months, respectively. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used to assess child behavior problems at 61 months. Mediation analyses showed that observed infant separation distress directly predicted emotional symptoms and mother-reported infant separation distress directly predicted hyperactivity/inattention problems. Observed separation distress lowered maternal parenting self-efficacy, which in turn reduced the use of positive parenting, ultimately linking to increases in preschool behavior problems. To conclude, there exist both direct and indirect associations between infant separation distress and preschool behavior problems.

In the present study, we aimed to assess the predictive role of selected factors on maternal responses to infant crying at 6–12 months after birth. About 221 Polish mothers in the postpartum period completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the 2-item Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-2), the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), and a Polish adaptation of the My Emotions Scale—the Emotional Reactions to Infant Crying Questionnaire (SER-PD). Through multivariate analyses, we found that educational level, maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms, parental reflective functioning, and breastfeeding impacted child-oriented and parent-oriented responses to infant cries. Specifically, higher prementalizing, severity of the symptoms of depression, and educational level were associated with higher anxiety in response to infant crying, while higher Interest and Curiosity were linked with higher sympathy for infant signalling. Moreover, higher parental empathy as a response to their child's cries was related to a medium certainty about mental states and indicating breastfeeding as a main or a supplementary way of feeding the baby. In conclusion, enhancing parental reflective functioning and encouraging breastfeeding can help mothers better comprehend both their own and their infants' responses. A proper intervention is needed to ensure support for mothers and infants.

Early Head Start (EHS) serves prenatal families through their home visiting programs, offering support, referrals to services, and help preparing for parenthood. EHS programs individualize services to meet prenatal families’ unique needs, yet we do not understand the full nuance of how this individualization occurs. In this study, we sought staff perspectives from those who work directly with prenatal families and/or have knowledge of how their EHS program serves prenatal families. We conducted interviews with nine EHS staff members (67% white, 22% Latina, 11% Black; 66% held a Bachelor's or Master's degree) with an average of 11 years’ experience working for EHS from rural (56%) and urban (44%) EHS programs across the United States. Staff identified challenges they faced working with prenatal families (e.g., ensuring families had access to needed services) and successes they wanted to celebrate (e.g., individualizing service provision to meet families’ unique needs). Findings from this study lend themselves to practice recommendations for improving EHS prenatal services even further, such as building out networks of community programs to support prenatal families, and additional research on cumulative benefits for families who enroll in EHS prenatally.

The purpose of this report is to further validate three measures of maternal responses to infant crying. These are the Infant Crying Questionnaire, which assesses beliefs about infant crying, the My Emotions Questionnaire, which assesses emotional reactions to infant crying, and one subscale of the Maternal Responsiveness Questionnaire which assesses nonresponsiveness to crying. Mother–infant dyads (N = 299) from the United States participated, mothers completed self-reports during the prenatal period, the focal questionnaires when their infants were 2-month, 6-month, and 1-year old, and other relevant questionnaires when their children were 2 years old. Maternal sensitivity was observed during each postnatal wave, mothers reported child behavior problems and social competence, and infant emotion regulation was observed at 1 and 2 years. The proposed factor structures were replicated, and each measure's subscales demonstrated strong internal consistency reliability and stability across waves. Subscales demonstrated convergent validity with one another and maternal characteristics, predictive validity to observed maternal sensitivity and mother-reported emotion socialization, and there was some evidence of predictive validity to child outcomes for select subscales. The utility of these measures within the field of infant mental health is discussed.

Reflective supervision is a relationship-based strategy for professionals that supports their growth and development through a trusting and safe connection. Although there has been research on both clinical and reflective supervision's benefits to those in the infant mental health field, the literature review indicates a gap in the research involving issues of culture and diversity within the supervisory relationship. Additionally, from a lens of diversity, the current data tends to address the experience of White professionals. This research team intentionally set out to gather the opinions of BIPOC professionals. As a result, the data set includes 52% BIPOC professionals and 47% White professionals. In order to advance this important topic, this study investigates how issues of culture and diversity are addressed, or not addressed, for mental health trainees, clinicians, and allied professionals within the infant mental health community. While the professional roots of this research team are embedded in infant mental health, our sample was not restricted to this community. It is the hope that the findings from this research will inspire others to take the initiative to contribute significantly to the field with an inclusive lens and focus. This research was conducted in the United States of America.

Child abuse is a pervasive problem impacting millions of children. Researchers largely rely on parent-report questionnaires to examine risk for child abuse, leaving a gap in research concerning the link between observed parent and child behaviors and child abuse potential. The current study pursued a multi-method approach to explore relations between parent and child factors and child abuse potential (via the Brief Child Abuse Potential Inventory; BCAP) in a sample of 84 referred for behavioral problems in Australia. About half of the sample engaged in socially desirable responding which resulted in an invalid profile on the BCAP. Therefore, analyses were conducted twice to assess risk factors for child abuse within the standard valid BCAP profile sample (n = 41) and the full sample including valid and invalid profiles (n = 84). Within the valid-only sample, parent emotion dysregulation contributed significantly to the model predicting child abuse potential. However, within the full sample, parent emotion dysregulation, romantic attachment avoidance, stress, and negative touch were significantly associated with child abuse potential. Findings highlight the importance of including parents with invalid BCAP profiles when assessing child abuse potential as these high-risk parents may go unnoticed and miss connections to critical interventions.

Previous work has shown that caregiver executive functions (EFs) are robustly linked to EFs in children. However, existing evidence has used mixed methods approaches combining questionnaires and experimental tasks in older children. The current study used contextually similar questionnaires to examine whether caregiver EFs were linked to infant EFs, and whether household stress and socioeconomic status moderated these associations. Ninety-one families living in the Midlands region of the United Kingdom participated in the study. Caregiver EFs were assessed using the behavior rating inventory of executive functions and infant EFs were assessed using the early executive functions questionnaire. Caregivers were also asked to provide information on household stress and socioeconomic status. Our findings showed that better caregiver metacognition was associated with better infant sustained attention, and this association was moderated by caregiver life stress. Our findings contribute to the understanding of early associations between caregiver and child EFs.

Pregnant women were exposed to multiple sources of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about the potential fetal programming effects of child development. A few studies show that prenatal maternal stress during the pandemic is associated with greater negative affectivity and more extraversion in infants. However, studies investigating this association are very few and need to be replicated. This study aims to prospectively investigate the association between prenatal maternal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic and infant temperament, while assessing the relative contribution of postnatal maternal stress. A total of 269 low-risk, French-speaking women from the province of Quebec, Canada, completed questionnaires during pregnancy to report on their prenatal maternal stress (general and pandemic-related). When their child was 6 months old, the mothers completed a second questionnaire to collect information on postnatal stress and infant temperament. The results show that prenatal maternal stress in the context of the pandemic significantly predicted infants’ negative affectivity and orienting/regulation factors, even after controlling for postnatal stress. The results support the fetal programming hypothesis, while highlighting the additional contribution of maternal stress during the child's first months of life.

Infant-directed singing (IDSi) is a natural means of dyadic communication that contributes to children's mental health by enhancing emotion expression, close relationships, exploration and learning. Therefore, it is important to learn about factors that impact the IDSi. This study modeled the mother- (mental health), infant- (emotional responses and health status) and environment (war trauma)-related factors influencing acoustic IDSi features, such as pitch (F0) variability, amplitude and vibration and the F0 contour of shapes and movements. The participants were 236 mothers and infants from Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The mothers reported their mental health problems, infants’ emotionality and regulation skills, and, along with pediatric checkups, illnesses and disorders, as well as traumatic war events that were also photo documented. The results showed that the mothers’ mental health problems and infants’ poor health status were associated with IDSi, characterized by narrow and lifeless amplitude and vibration, and poor health was also associated with the limited and rigid shapes and movements of F0 contours. Traumatic war events were associated with flat and narrow F0 variability and the monotonous and invariable resonance and rhythm of IDSi formants. The infants’ emotional responses did not impact IDSi. The potential of protomusical singing to help war-affected dyads is discussed.

This study was conducted primarily to investigate the basic psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Parenting-an-Infant Competence Scale (PICS), with a sample of middle- and upper-income Nigerian mothers. A secondary aim was to produce a foundation for comparisons with other parents. Data were obtained from 184 mothers who attended child-health clinics at a university hospital in Benin City, Edo State. Most of the item-level attributes of the PICS were desirable, and exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) revealed four distinct factors: resilience, support and effectiveness, satisfaction as a mother, and mental and physical well-being. For the most part, the mothers reported positive functioning on all four factors. The results indicated that the PICS had more desirable psychometric attributes than a similar scale, the Barkin Index of Maternal Functioning (BIMF). The satisfactory performance of the PICS with a specific sample in Nigeria establishes the possibility that the scale could serve as a foundation for assessing and comparing other parents in Nigeria as well as parents in other countries—including countries that, unlike Nigeria, do not have a collectivist orientation.