Am J Psychiatry 1984; 141:223-229
Copyright © 1984 by American Psychiatric Association
Social and affective development in infants with a manic-depressive parent
TJ Gaensbauer, RJ Harmon, L Cytryn and DH McKnew
The authors observed seven infants who had a manic-depressive parent
longitudinally in a structured laboratory setting with their mothers at
ages 12, 15, and 18 months. The infants' attachment and affiliative
behaviors and the patterning of their affective responses were assessed
according to systematic measures and compared with those of a matched
control group. The proband infants appeared to show a disturbance in the
quality of their attachments to their mothers as well as a generalized
disturbance in their capacities to regulate their emotions adaptively.
There appeared to be an increasing severity of disturbance with increasing
age. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.
