Psycho-affective infant development and maternal depression

The research presented here aims at studying infant-mother interactions, as well as the infant's development, in a longitudinal and prospective framework. Our hypothesis is that maternal depression entails disorders in infant development through disturbed relationships, manifesting themselves, at a very early stage, in disturbances in the affective interactions between the mother and her infant. We observe significant differences between the different affective dimensions of maternal depression, the level of affective engagement of the partners, the emotional expression of the infant and its type of attachment at 1 year of age. There is a positive correlation between the interval of postural DQ and language DQ in insecure infants of depressed mothers (p < 0.001). By contrast, when these infants have a secure attachment, the interval between postural DQ and language DQ is not significant. The findings of our study show the link between the "Insecure" feature of the infant's attachment and maternal depression (p < 0.001).