An overview of maternal depression, infant reactions and intervention programmes.

Studies on high risk motherhood and its effects on mother-infant interactions have focused on depression as one potential factor placing infants at risk of less than optimal socioemotional development. Effects of maternal depression on infant psychological development have been widely documented. Compared with controls, infants of depressed mothers manifest disturbances in their ability to regulate emotion, impairments in their capacity to engage objects and people and to react adequately to social stimulation. These infants also show cognitive problems during development and insecure attachment behavior to mothers at one-year-old. In this article first of all features of maternal depression, its prevalence during pregnancy and post-partum and assessment difficulties will be investigated. Secondly, on the basis of the most recent research, maternal depression effects on child development will be discussed, highlighting how crucial the caregiver quality and the process of affect regulation are for understanding intergenerational transmission of depression. Staring from these considerations then preventive interventions based on home visiting technique, mainly aimed to reduce depression negative impact on child psychological development, will be shown.