1560 – Perceived infant difficult temperament and mothers psychological distress

Abstract

Introduction A perceived difficult infant temperament has been associated to mothers depressive mood (Beck, 1996; McGrath et al., 2008). Objective To identify infant difficult temperament dimensions associated to mothers psychological distress. Methods 103 mothers (M= 31.9 years, SD=4.10; 68% married, 71.7% primiparae ) filled in the difficult infant temperament questionnaire (DITQ; Macedo et al., 2011), two items of the Brief infant sleep questionnaire (number of infant night wakings, duration of infants wakefulness during the night; Sadeh, 2004), the Beck depression inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1996; Coelho et al., 2002) and the Postpartum depression screening scale (PDSS; Beck and Gable, 2000; Pereira et al., 2010) when their babies were 3 months of age. DITQ factor analysis with varimax rotation and reliability analyses suggested 2 temperament dimensions: emotional difficulties (irritable baby, cries excessively, difficult to calm down), F1; sleeping problems (baby who has sleeping problems, gives bad nights, has difficulties falling asleep), F2. Results DITQ-F1, DITQ-F2 and infants number of night wakings were positively and significantly associated with BDIII/ PDSS total scores. Infants eating problems were not associated with BDI-II or PDSS values. Controlling for mothers severe depressive mood, regression analysis revealed that DITQ F2 was the variable that explained BDI-II total score ( R 2 =.081; p =.011). PDSS total score was predicted by DITQ F2 ( R 2 =.050; p =.030) and number of infant night wakings ( R 2 =.074; p=.010). Conclusion Infants sleeping problems and infants number of night wakings contribute to mothers psychological distress in postpartum. Financial support AstraZeneca Foundation.