SYNOPSIS

Objective. Mothers with psychiatric diagnoses have been found to be generally less responsive and sensitive when interacting with their children, but studies of the quality of their dialogues with their children have not been conducted. Such dialogues are associated with children’s coherent representations of their experiences, which promote resilience and coping. Design. The present study focused on mothers with a diagnosis of anxiety (n = 23), depression (n = 23), or anorexia nervosa (n = 20) and mothers without any diagnosis (n = 21) and examined their dialogues with their children regarding children’s emotional experiences using the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogues procedure. Results. Maternal diagnosis of depression and anorexia nervosa were associated with distinct, non-matched emotion dialogues, whereas the emotion dialogues of mothers with anxiety were not different from those of non-diagnosed mothers. Children in all three diagnostic groups showed less cooperation and coherence during the dialogues about their emotions compared to the children of the mothers in the non-clinical group. Conclusions. Maternal psychopathology may affect the mother-child dyad’s capacity for recalling, describing, and co-constructing emotion-laden narratives.

概要

目标。已发现患有精神病诊断的母亲与孩子互动时通常反应迟钝且敏感度较低，但是尚未进行关于与孩子对话的质量的研究。这种对话与儿童对自己经历的连贯表述有关，从而促进了复原力和应对能力。设计。本研究的重点是诊断为焦虑症（ n  = 23），抑郁症（ n  = 23）或神经性厌食症（ n  = 20）的母亲和没有任何诊断（ n  = 21）的母亲，并检查了他们与子女的对话使用自传性情感事件对话程序的儿童情感体验。结果。产妇对抑郁症和神经性厌食症的诊断与独特的，不匹配的情感对话相关，而焦虑母亲的情感对话与未诊断的母亲没有差异。与非临床组母亲的孩子相比，所有三个诊断组的孩子在就自己的情绪进行对话时表现出较少的合作和连贯性。结论。产妇的心理病理学可能会影响母子二元组回忆，描述和共同构建充满情感的叙事的能力。