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Maternal Trauma and Related Psychopathology: Consequences to Parental Brain Functioning Associated with Caregiving

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Motherhood in the Face of Trauma

Part of the book series: Integrating Psychiatry and Primary Care ((IPPC))

Abstract

The chapter takes as its departure point the Winnicottian notion of “Good-enough mothering” as being tied to the capacity of the primary caregiver to engage in mutual emotion regulation during sensitive periods of early development. Maternal experience of interpersonal violence and related psychopathology (i.e. posttraumatic stress disorder) through associated emotional dysregulation and activation of traumatic memory traces even by routine mother–infant interactions (i.e. interactions such as separations involving child helplessness) perturbs this mutual regulation. Original research from the Geneva Early Childhood Stress Project is described to support that both neural activity and epigenetics of stress-linked genes are promising as (1) important markers of these hypothesized mechanisms and (2) useful measures of the effectiveness of targeted parent–child interventions. The role of individual differences played by possible endophenotypes in the intergenerational transmission of trauma and associated psychopathology, as for example that noted for mothers with prominent dissociative symptoms, is discussed with its clinical implications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The National Center for Competence in Research-The Synaptic Basis of Mental Disorders (NCCR-SYNAPSY; http://www.nccr-synapsy.ch).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Service, University of Geneva Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland

    Virginie C. Perizzolo Pointet, Dominik A. Moser, Francesca Suardi, Molly Rothenberg, Sandra Rusconi Serpa & Daniel S. Schechter

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Dominik A. Moser

  3. Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Sandra Rusconi Serpa

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland

    Daniel S. Schechter

  5. Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Daniel S. Schechter

Authors
  1. Virginie C. Perizzolo Pointet
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  2. Dominik A. Moser
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  3. Francesca Suardi
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  4. Molly Rothenberg
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  5. Sandra Rusconi Serpa
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  6. Daniel S. Schechter
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel S. Schechter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Maria Muzik

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Katherine Lisa Rosenblum

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Perizzolo Pointet, V.C., Moser, D.A., Suardi, F., Rothenberg, M., Serpa, S.R., Schechter, D.S. (2018). Maternal Trauma and Related Psychopathology: Consequences to Parental Brain Functioning Associated with Caregiving. In: Muzik, M., Rosenblum, K. (eds) Motherhood in the Face of Trauma. Integrating Psychiatry and Primary Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65724-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65724-0_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65722-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65724-0

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