States of Mind with Respect to Attachment: a comparative study between women who killed their children and mothers diagnosed with post-partum depression

Introduction: Attachment theory has been linked with the caregiving system, acting as a drive for a mother’s behavior towards her offspring. The most dramatic consequence of distress following maternity is filicide. Despite this, only few studies addressed the attachment models of women who committed filicide, and very little provided comparisons with mothers diagnosed with post-partum depression. Objective: We described the socio-demographic and psychopathological characteristics of mothers who committed filicide. Our aim was to detect differences in the attachment models between mothers who committed filicide, mothers with post-partum depression and control mothers. Participants and setting: We recruited 19 women who committed filicide (group F) along with 52 women with post-partum depression (group D), and 23 control mothers (group C). Methods: We administered a semi-structured interview on socio-demographic aspects and psychiatric history along with the Adult Attachment Interview. We performed an ANOVA, a post-hoc analysis and a logistic regression. Results: The logistic regression showed a higher prevalence of Dismissing and Disorganized attachments in women of group F compared with group C (p = 0.002, p = 0.007). Dismissing attachment was also overrepresented in group D vs group C (p = 0.012). Interestingly, women of group F showed a Preoccupied/entangled attachment to a lesser extent than those of group D, reaching a borderline significance (p = 0.056). Conclusions: Disorganized and Dismissing models of attachment are prevalent in women who committed filicide compared with mothers with post-partum depression and controls, while other models of attachment are less frequent. Therefore, attachment could be taken into consideration to define the risk for committing filicide.