TY - JOUR U1 - Wissenschaftlicher Artikel A1 - Sidor, Anna A1 - Kunz, Elisabeth A1 - Schweyer, Daniel A1 - Eickhorst, Andreas A1 - Cierpka, Manfred T1 - Links between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms, maternal distress, infant gender and sensitivity in a high-risk population JF - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health N2 - Background Maternal postpartum depression has an impact on mother-infant interaction. Mothers with depression display less positive affect and sensitivity in interaction with their infants compared to non-depressed mothers. Depressed women also show more signs of distress and difficulties adjusting to their role as mothers than non-depressed women. In addition, depressive mothers are reported to be affectively more negative with their sons than with daughters. Methods A non-clinical sample of 106 mother-infant dyads at psychosocial risk (poverty, alcohol or drug abuse, lack of social support, teenage mothers and maternal psychic disorder) was investigated with EPDS (maternal postpartum depressive symptoms), the CARE-Index (maternal sensitivity in a dyadic context) and PSI-SF (maternal distress). The baseline data were collected when the babies had reached 19 weeks of age. Results A hierarchical regression analysis yielded a highly significant relation between the PSI-SF subscale "parental distress" and the EPDS total score, accounting for 55% of the variance in the EPDS. The other variables did not significantly predict the severity of depressive symptoms. A two-way ANOVA with "infant gender" and "maternal postpartum depressive symptoms" showed no interaction effect on maternal sensitivity. Conclusions Depressive symptoms and maternal sensitivity were not linked. It is likely that we could not find any relation between both variables due to different measuring methods (self-reporting and observation). Maternal distress was strongly related to maternal depressive symptoms, probably due to the generally increased burden in the sample, and contributed to 55% of the variance of postpartum depressive symptoms. KW - Depressive Symptom Scale KW - Maternal Depression KW - Edinburgh Postnatal Depression KW - Postpartum Depression KW - Maternal Depressive Symptom KW - Wochenbettdepression KW - Mutter KW - Kind Y1 - 2011 UN - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:960-opus4-16929 SN - 1753-2000 SS - 1753-2000 U6 - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-1692 DO - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-1692 VL - 5 ER -