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Mother-baby units offer a care environment that is conducive to better care for fathers. However, these units still need to evolve in terms of organization and attitude to care. The systematic use of pre- and postnatal interviews is an interesting approach to consider., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.)

Background: Knowledge has increased regarding the developmental needs and capabilities of infants, and parental behaviours that support optimum infant development. Despite a better understanding of the emotional dysregulation in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and its effects on infants, general practitioners have had few guidelines for how to recognise and help emotionally dysregulated mother-infant dyads., Objective: This article focuses on the behaviours and needs of infants whose mothers have BPD, including knowledge and skills for primary care practitioners to help these troubled families., Discussion: Understanding the adequacy of parenting and troubling infant signs, such as hypervigilance, can potentially lead to either more intervention in primary care, including support, reassurance, guidance regarding development and interaction, and enhanced family support or else specialist referral for enhanced infant care. Infants’ needs are urgent, and timely intervention can begin a better life trajectory for infant and mother.

Background: Six per cent of patients who present to primary care have borderline personality disorder (BPD). Mothers with full or partial features of BPD, often undiagnosed and perhaps previously functioning adequately enough on the surface, may rapidly be-come emotionally dysregulated by the normal needs of an infant. Family and maternal functioning can rapidly destabilise. Management of patients with BPD in primary care may be challenging., Objective: The objectives of this article are to provide primary care practitioners with relevant information on current knowledge of BPD and its management when mothers with BPD are caregivers to an infant., Discussion: Useful guidelines for general practitioners that can help women who are emotionally dysregulated with infants include: keeping the diagnosis in mind openly discussing BPD diagnosis where relevant providing psychoeducational material and ongoing support to the woman and her familyreferring to specialised services for BPD referring to standard maternal-child health services and specialised .infant mental health services ongoing communication with other services and supervision for the practitioner.

The main aim of this study was to ascertain whether infants as young as 3 months of age, whose mothers suffer from borderline personality disorder (BPD), are already at risk of greater dysregulation than infants of mothers without BPD when faced with a minor stressful experience. Nineteen mothers diagnosed with BPD and 41 controls with no history of psychopathology and their 3-month-old infants were observed using Tronick's Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm. The authors found that infants whose mothers have BPD express less positive vocalizations and less nonautonomic self-regulation than infants of mothers with no psychopathology. The stress of the Still-Face episode affects their gaze and self-regulation behaviors more strongly than those of infants of controls. The Reunion episode seems particularly challenging for mothers with BPD, who show fewer smiles and an increase in intrusive behavior. Because infants and their mothers with BPD are already dysregulated at 3 months postpartum, envisaging very early intervention seems warranted.

Pregnancy is the time during which physiological and psychological preparation for motherhood takes place. It has long been considered a blessed time, free of psychiatric disorders. However, there is now strong evidence that major depressive disorder may occur not only after birth but even during the prepartum. Most often, mental illness during this period is underestimated, not assessed, therefore not diagnosed, and consequently goes untreated. Reviewing the literature on the negative impact of both maternal and infant health in case of perinatal depression, we underline that recognizing and treating prenatal depression will lead to preventive and curative treatments for mothers, enhance infant health, and therefore positively influence mother-infant relationships.

Human newborns are cognitively and socially competent. Although they are sensitive to the presence of a social partner, little is known on the emergence of the ability to partake in social interaction. In this study we aimed to explore the roots of turn-taking in the neonatal period. We wished to highlight the way mothers' and newborns' vocalizations are organized in relation to each other in a face-to-face communication situation. We observed 15 mothers and their 2 to 4-day-old newborns while mothers were instructed to speak to them and infants were in a receptive behavioural state. We examined the temporal organization of maternal and newborn vocalization. Our results show that of all newborn vocalizations analysed, one third consisted of overlapping vocalizations with a maternal vocalization. Furthermore, among the 119 newborn vocalizations that followed a maternal vocalization, 68.9% occurred within the first second, and 26.9% were latched (occurring within the first 50 ms). Indeed our study suggests that a 1-s window would be the correct window to appreciate social contingency in the neonatal period. Our study provides evidence that a turn-taking ability is already present at birth suggesting that turn taking, which depends on a tight coordination between interacting individuals, is a precocious human ability.

BackgroundUniversal screening for postpartum depression is recommended in many countries. Knowledge of whether the disclosure of depressive symptoms in the postpartum period differs across cultures could improve detection and provide new insights into the pathogenesis. Moreover, it is a necessary step to evaluate the universal use of screening instruments in research and clinical practice. In the current study we sought to assess whether the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the most widely used screening tool for postpartum depression, measures the same underlying construct across cultural groups in a large international dataset.MethodOrdinal regression and measurement invariance were used to explore the association between culture, operationalized as education, ethnicity/race and continent, and endorsement of depressive symptoms using the EPDS on 8209 new mothers from Europe and the USA.ResultsEducation, but not ethnicity/race, influenced the reporting of postpartum depression [difference between robust comparative fit indexes (∆*CFI) < 0.01]. The structure of EPDS responses significantly differed between Europe and the USA (∆*CFI > 0.01), but not between European countries (∆*CFI < 0.01).ConclusionsInvestigators and clinicians should be aware of the potential differences in expression of phenotype of postpartum depression that women of different educational backgrounds may manifest. The increasing cultural heterogeneity of societies together with the tendency towards globalization requires a culturally sensitive approach to patients, research and policies, that takes into account, beyond rhetoric, the context of a person's experiences and the context in which the research is conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]