Poster #135 - Exploring Longitudinal Relations Between Mother’s Adult Attachment Security, Dissociation, and Children’s Depressive Symptoms

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Attachment disorganization in infancy has been shown to forecast later emotional and behavior problems. Processes underlying this association are less clear. Mothers’ unresolved trauma on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), assessed by lapses in the monitoring of discourse and/or reasoning, predicts frightening/anomalous maternal behavior with infants which, in turn, forecasts infant disorganization (Schuengel, Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1999). Mothers classified as Unresolved more often report dissociative experiences (Hesse & van Ijzendoorn, 1999) which are thought to underlie displays of frightening behavior with their child. Experiencing dissociative states on the part of the mother may increase the child’s risk of developing emotional problems since experiencing dissociation makes it more difficult for mothers to reliably support the child when needed. Thus, this study examined antecedents and consequences of maternal dissociative states. We hypothesized that 1) after controlling for the covariates of maternal income and education, mothers’ unresolved trauma assessed prenatally will predict mothers’ dissociative states 7 years later, and 2) after controlling for mothers’ income, education, unresolved trauma (assessed prenatally), and frightening behaviors with their infants (assessed when the infant was 8 months old), mothers’ dissociative states would be related to their ratings of their children’s depressive symptoms at age 7.
Mothers (N=125) were recruited during third trimester of pregnancy and followed over time. Mothers (mean age=29 years old) were mostly white, and socioeconomic status ranged from poverty to upper middle class. Mothers were administered the AAI prenatally, which was coded for Unresolved Trauma stemming from loss or abuse. Mother-infant interactions were videotaped during play, feeding and a clothes’ change at 8 months to assess their frightening behavior, using scales developed by Main & Hesse (1995). When their children were 7-year-old , mothers completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), a 28-item screening tool for dissociation with 3 subscales (depersonalization/derealization, dissociative amnesia, and absorption) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBC) to assess their child’s mental health.
As shown in Table 1, mothers’ unresolved trauma assessed prenatally predicted mothers’ dissociative symptoms 7 years later, after controlling for family income and mothers’ education. Lower income was also a significant predictor of mothers’ dissociative symptoms. As shown in Table 2 (top), mothers’ dissociative symptoms predicted their reports of their children’s anxious-depressive symptoms when the children were 7 years old, after controlling for mothers’ income, education, unresolved trauma, and frightening behavior. Also, mothers’ dissociative symptoms and mothers’ frightening behaviors were both marginally significantly related to maternal reports of children’s withdrawn depression (see Table 2, bottom).
These findings are consistent with previous research establishing relations between maternal unresolved trauma, maternal dissociation, and adverse child mental health outcomes. Due to the connections found between maternal disorganized/unresolved attachment, dissociation, and mental health problems in children over time, identifying disorganized/unresolved attachment among pregnant women or during the early stages of a child’s life may provide an important window of opportunity for those specializing in preventative interventions.

Authors

• Lisa S. Panisch, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Nancy Hazen, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Jacobvitz, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author