Fix my child: The importance of including siblings in clinical assessments

This study examined concordance in the attachment strategies of school-aged siblings with reference to environmental risk in terms of poverty and maltreatment. It also investigated the effect of child maltreatment and maternal mental illness on children's psychosocial functioning in terms of the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) including unresolved trauma and the DMM Depressed modifier.

The attachment strategies of 30 sibling pairs, aged 5-14 years, were assessed using the School-age Assessment of Attachment (SAA). Unlike most previous studies, this study included siblings from large families of two to six children.

The main finding was that as environmental risk increases, the diversity of sibling attachment strategies decreases with greater recourse to the DMM Type A3-6 and A/C strategies. Unlike previous studies, the highest level of concordance was found in sibling pairs with the opposite gender. Boys whose mothers had a history of mental illness were significantly more likely than girls to be assessed with the DMM-depression modifier.

As danger increases, children in the same family experience more of the same childhood. Further research should focus on single case, intra-familial studies to build a systemic model of the shared environment. Research should also evaluate the effects of environmental risk compared with size of the sibling group on children's attachment strategies. The clinical implications point to the importance of assessing all children in the family using a model built around functional formulation rather than diagnosing the symptoms of a particular child.