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Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
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Childhood abuse and neglect experiences, Hostile-Helpless attachment, and reflective functioning in mentally ill

Lavinia Barone1, Nicola Carone1

  • 1Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, Lab on Attachment and Parenting - LAG, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.

Attachment & Human Development
|April 8, 2020
PubMed

The present study represents the first empirical investigation of the mechanisms - a Hostile-Helpless (HH) attachment and reflective functioning (RF) - through which childhood abuse and neglect (CA&N) experiences may impact a mother's likelihood to commit filicide. The sample was comprised of 46 mentally ill mothers. Differences in attachment-derived risk variables between filicidal mothers (FM) and non-filicidal mothers (NFM) were also examined. FM (n = 23) reported lower RF, higher HH attachment, and a more severe history of CA&N, compared to NFM (n = 23), but did not differ on the severity of childhood experiences of loss of and/or separation from attachment figures. Bayesian analysis indicated that the mediated effect of more severe CA&N on the likelihood of committing filicide through higher HH attachment was significantly amplified by lower RF. A developmental interpretation of filicide is proposed and clinical implications for prevention and attachment-based interventions with at-risk mother-child dyads are discussed.

Keywords:
Hostile-Helpless attachmentchildhood abuse and neglectfilicidemental illnessreflective functioning

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