ABSTRACT
Most women find becoming a mother a positive experience. Indeed, research in Edinburgh showed that childbirth actually had a psychiatric protective effect. One possibility is that individual differences between infants may exert an impact on the mother’s experience, including the onset of depression. This line of investigation represents something of a shift in emphasis in the work on mother–infant relationships and postnatal depression. T. Field et al., found that when nondepressed nurses interacted with infants of depressed mothers, the nurses’ own behaviour became less expressive and positive than when interacting with infants of well women. The relationship between infants’ behaviour assessed by the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale and mothers’ subsequent mental state was then investigated, and a significant relationship was found. Depressed women often appear either withdrawn and disengaged from their infants or intrusive and hostile. In low-risk samples the disturbance is not as extreme, but depression has been associated with less sensitive and responsive maternal interactions with the infant.
