Clinical Psychology Unit, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 127, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev. 2017 Dec;20(4):369-390. doi: 10.1007/s10567-017-0240-7.
Depression and anxiety load in families. In the present study, we focus on exposure to parental negative emotions in first postnatal year as a developmental pathway to early parent-to-child transmission of depression and anxiety. We provide an overview of the little research available on the links between infants' exposure to negative emotion and infants' emotional development in this developmentally sensitive period, and highlight priorities for future research. To address continuity between normative and maladaptive development, we discuss exposure to parental negative emotions in infants of parents with as well as without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. We focus on infants' emotional expressions in everyday parent-infant interactions, and on infants' attention to negative facial expressions as early indices of emotional development. Available evidence suggests that infants' emotional expressions echo parents' expressions and reactions in everyday interactions. In turn, infants exposed more to negative emotions from the parent seem to attend less to negative emotions in others' facial expressions. The links between exposure to parental negative emotion and development hold similarly in infants of parents with and without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. Given its potential links to infants' emotional development, and to later psychological outcomes in children of parents with depression and anxiety, we conclude that early exposure to parental negative emotions is an important developmental mechanism that awaits further research. Longitudinal designs that incorporate the study of early exposure to parents' negative emotion, socio-emotional development in infancy, and later psychological functioning while considering other genetic and biological vulnerabilities should be prioritized in future research.
家庭中的抑郁和焦虑负担。在本研究中，我们关注的是婴儿在出生后第一年中接触到的父母的负面情绪，因为这是抑郁和焦虑在早期从父母向孩子传播的一个发展途径。我们提供了一个关于在这个发育敏感时期，婴儿接触到负面情绪与婴儿情绪发展之间联系的少量研究的概述，并强调了未来研究的优先事项。为了解决正常和适应不良发展之间的连续性问题，我们讨论了有和没有抑郁和/或焦虑诊断的父母的婴儿接触到父母负面情绪的情况。我们关注的是婴儿在日常母婴互动中的情绪表达，以及婴儿对负面面部表情的注意力，这是情绪发展的早期指标。现有证据表明，婴儿的情绪表达反映了父母在日常互动中的表达和反应。反过来，婴儿更多地接触到来自父母的负面情绪，似乎对他人面部表情中的负面情绪关注度较低。在有和没有抑郁和/或焦虑诊断的父母的婴儿中，接触父母的负面情绪与发展之间的联系是相似的。鉴于它与婴儿的情绪发展以及抑郁和焦虑父母的孩子的后期心理结果之间的潜在联系，我们得出结论，早期接触父母的负面情绪是一个重要的发展机制，需要进一步研究。未来的研究应优先考虑包含对父母早期负面情绪暴露、婴儿期社会情感发展以及考虑其他遗传和生物学脆弱性的后期心理功能的纵向设计。
