Dialogues about Emotional Events between Mothers with Anxiety, Depression, Anorexia Nervosa, and No Diagnosis and Their Children

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Mothers with psychiatric diagnoses have been found to be generally less responsive and sensitive when interacting with their children, but studies of the quality of their dialogues with their children have not been conducted. Such dialogues are associated with children’s coherent representations of their experiences, which promote resilience and coping. Design. The present study focused on mothers with a diagnosis of anxiety (n = 23), depression (n = 23), or anorexia nervosa (n = 20) and mothers without any diagnosis (n = 21) and examined their dialogues with their children regarding children’s emotional experiences using the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogues procedure. Results. Maternal diagnosis of depression and anorexia nervosa were associated with distinct, non-matched emotion dialogues, whereas the emotion dialogues of mothers with anxiety were not different from those of non-diagnosed mothers. Children in all three diagnostic groups showed less cooperation and coherence during the dialogues about their emotions compared to the children of the mothers in the non-clinical group. Conclusions. Maternal psychopathology may affect the mother-child dyad’s capacity for recalling, describing, and co-constructing emotion-laden narratives.

AFFILIATIONS AND ADDRESSES

Luca Cerniglia, Uninettuno Telematic International University, Faculty of Psychology, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, 00186, Rome, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]. Silvia Cimino, Renata Tambelli, Giulia Ballarotto, and Michela Erriu are at Sapienza University of Rome, Marinella Paciello is at Uninettuno Telematic International University, and David Oppenheim and Nina Koren-Karie are at the University of Haifa, Israel.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors declare that they have followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. Written Informed consent was obtained from each of the study participants, ensuring the privacy of participants and their data. Furthermore, the research described here was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Psychology Faculty at Sapienza, University of Rome, before the start of the study and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Funding: No funding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Silvia Cimino

Luca Cerniglia, Uninettuno Telematic International University, Faculty of Psychology, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, 00186, Rome, Italy. [email protected]. Silvia Cimino, Renata Tambelli, Giulia Ballarotto, and Michela Erriu are at Sapienza University of Rome, Marinella Paciello is at Uninettuno Telematic International University, and David Oppenheim and Nina Koren-Karie are at the University of Haifa, Israel.