The Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: The Effects of Maternal PTSD in Mother-Infant Interactions

The objective of the study was to examine the process of mother to infant trauma transmission among traumatized mothers in humanitarian contexts.

We investigated the impact of mothers’ post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms on the quality of the dyadic interaction by conducting a microanalysis of mother-infant interactions at specific moments when trauma was recalled, compared to more neutral moments.

Twenty-four mother-infant dyadic interactions of traumatized mothers and children aged from 1.5 to 30 months Central Africa, Chad, and Cameroon were videotaped during three sequences: a neutral initial session (baseline) exploring mothers’ representations of the infant and of their bonding; a second sequence, “the traumatic narration,” in which mothers were asked to talk about the difficult events they had experienced; and a third sequence focusing on a neutral subject. Three minutes of each sequence were coded through a specific grid for microanalysis [based on the scales developed at Bobigny Faculty of Medicine and the work of (1)], according to different communication modalities (touch, visual, and vocal), for both the mother and the child.

Impact of traumatic event (IES-R), the level of depression and anxiety (HAD) were investigated in order to have a holistic understanding of the trauma transmission mechanism.