Women and Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Themes in Maternal Interviews about Their Children’s Psychiatric Diagnoses

Abstract

Twelve mothers who had experienced domestic violence and whose children had received psychiatric diagnoses before school age were interviewed. An attachment based tool, the Reaction to Diagnosis Interview, was employed as it accesses maternal representational content. Using psychodynamic and attachment based models as a theoretical framework, content analysis was performed and four thematic categories emerged from the data: intense negative emotionality and suffering; diminished cognitive coping and dysregulation; preoccupation with trauma related material; and constricted causal attributions. Thematic categories as well as inter-relationships among themes are described and discussed in terms of current literature.