Maternal and paternal psychopathological risk in children with non-organic failure to thrive

Abstract

Researches in the field of Developmental Psychopathology have underlined that maternal psychopathology is as a crucial risk factor for the development and maintaining of feeding disorders in children. However, the scientific literature that has studied the outcomes of maternal emotional difficulties (e.g. maternal eating disorders) on psychological functioning of the child has not taken into appropriate consideration the role of the father as potential risk or protective factor. The present longitudinal study aimed to elaborate on the impact of the maternal psychological functioning on the adaptation of the child between the first and second childhood. The sample is composed of N=60 parents with children that have followed a longitudinal research protocol and have been recruited through nurseries, primary schools and outpatients’ clinics. At three evaluation times (T1, T2, T3) both Clinical Group (CG) and Non Clinical Group (NCG) have been assessed through: SCID-I (parental psychiatric diagnosis); SCL-90-R (parental psychopathological risk); EAT-40 (parental disordered eating); CBCL (children’s emotional-behavioral functioning). Our research has confirmed that children with severe difficulties in the area of feeding tend to have mothers who show problems in the same field. In fact, the diagnosis of eating disorder in the mothers seems to predict failure to thrive in the children only at Time 1, while it is associated with a maladaptive psychological emotional functioning both in the first and in the second childhood. Children with feeding disorders seem also to be more likely to have parents with problematically stable psychological profiles.

Keywords

• parental psychopathology
• feeding disorders
• developmental psychopathology