Meiser Susanne, Zietlow Anna-Lena, Reck Corinna, Träuble Birgit
Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University Hospital, Vossstraße 2, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany,
Arch Womens Ment Health. 2015 Oct;18(5):707-16. doi: 10.1007/s00737-015-0519-y. Epub 2015 Apr 3.
To enhance understanding of impaired socio-emotional development in children of postpartum depressed or anxious mothers, this longitudinal study addressed the question of whether maternal postpartum depression and anxiety disorders result in deficits in children's processing of facial emotional expressions (FEEs) at pre-school age. Thirty-two mothers who had fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) criteria for postpartum depression and/or anxiety disorder and their pre-school aged children were tested for FEE processing abilities and compared to a healthy control group (n = 29). Child assessments included separate tasks for emotion recognition and emotion labelling. Mothers completed an emotion recognition test as well as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders I (SCID-I). Children of postpartum depressed and/or anxious mothers performed significantly worse than control children at labelling, but not at recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions. Emotion labelling at pre-school age was predicted by child age and maternal postpartum mental health, but neither current maternal mental health nor current maternal emotion recognition was associated with child FEE processing. Results point to a specific importance of early social experiences for the development of FEE labelling skills. However, further studies involving sensitive measures of emotion recognition are needed to determine if there might also exist subtle effects on FEE recognition.
为了增进对产后抑郁或焦虑母亲的孩子社会情感发展受损情况的理解，这项纵向研究探讨了母亲产后抑郁和焦虑症是否会导致学龄前儿童在面部情绪表情（FEEs）处理方面出现缺陷的问题。对32名符合《精神疾病诊断与统计手册》第四版（DSM-IV）产后抑郁和/或焦虑症标准的母亲及其学龄前儿童进行了FEE处理能力测试，并与一个健康对照组（n = 29）进行比较。儿童评估包括情绪识别和情绪标签的单独任务。母亲们完成了一项情绪识别测试以及《DSM-IV轴I障碍结构化临床访谈》第一部分（SCID-I）。产后抑郁和/或焦虑母亲的孩子在标签任务上的表现明显比对照组孩子差，但在识别基本情绪的面部表情方面则不然。学龄前儿童的情绪标签能力由儿童年龄和母亲产后心理健康状况预测，但当前母亲的心理健康状况和当前母亲的情绪识别能力均与儿童FEE处理无关。结果表明早期社会经历对FEE标签技能发展具有特定重要性。然而，需要进一步开展涉及情绪识别敏感测量方法的研究，以确定对FEE识别是否也可能存在细微影响。
