Forgotten Baby Syndrome: dimensions of the phenomenon and new research perspectives

Abstract

Forgotten Baby Syndrome (FBS) defines the phenomenon of forgetting a child in a parked vehicle. FBS is in constant growth with significant repercussions for the parent, the family and society. Scientific research on the topic is very limited. Literature referring to FBS focuses mostly on the clinical conditions that cause the death of the children involved. However, the circumstances in which such episodes occur are very rarely analyzed. One of the major limit of research in this field is related to the sources of information, which are limited to media in most cases and, therefore, are scarcely reliable. Monitoring the phenomenon in the United States showed that out of a total of 171 cases, 73% concerned children who had been left in the car by an adult. Half of the adults were unaware, or had forgotten the child. In most cases, these episodes involve adults who have perfectly intact both psychic and cognitive functions. Therefore, the dynamics underling the occurrence of such episodes seem to be incomprehensible. At the end of the analysis carried out it can be considered that the cases of death of minors following abandonment in vehicles, are to be considered connected to the normal functioning of the Working Memory (WM) functionality. The link between WM deficits and frankly psychopathological conditions remains residual and it still requires careful differential screening. Finally, the hypothesis of the occurrence of transient and/or acute circumstances of exogenous origin, which may affect WM's performance, remains to be considered. Considering these deaths as events that, in most cases, are of criminal relevance they may require the intervention of psychologists and psychiatrists during the process. In this prospective the assumption of a broader point of view can have a significant impact on the descriptive capacity in clinical-forensic field.