POSTNATAL DEPRESSION

Postnatal Depression: How Can It Influence Infant Development and Attachment

Postnatal Depression: How can it Influence Infant Development and Attachment

Introduction

The rationale for this study was that the issue related to postnatal depression will further enhance the body of knowledge available to practitioners working with mothers. It will also provide a source of insights and hypotheses for preventive intervention research. The study located within a feminist, and point framework that begins from the perspective of women, with the aim to explore women's accounts of their experiences in relation to depression as an important source of knowledge.

The study aims to explain in detail the concept of attachment theory and its role in children with disability. It explores the significance of understanding the attachment theory in assisting parents, and care givers cope with a disability in children. It will take into account the anti-disability perspective with regards to disabled children, and will provide a framework to assist practitioners in social work in dealing with children with a disability.

Bowlby's Attachment Theory

Attachment theory is the strongest theoretical influence in modern-day studies of infant-parent relationships. John Bowlby was the first exponent of the theory. He brought to bear as a very original mind and an interdisciplinary approach to the study of children and their emotional development. Intellectual flowering of his work was the main language that now called "attachment theory." Bowlby's thinking has its roots in psychoanalytic thought, particularly in the emphasis on the importance of early relationship between parent and child figure. However, he adds significant evolutionary and ethological concepts. In his opinion, the propensity to make strong emotional bonds to a particular individual is the fundamental component of human nature, already present in embryonic form in infants (Bowlby 1988: 234-255). Under the influence of Freud and Darwin, Bowlby explains that the root of the human person lies in early childhood relationships. He explains why the Department of Child educator should cause so much trouble. He explains why the distress caused by this separation does not stop immediately contact restored. It also explains why a significant setback or injury in these relationships can constantly shape the child's development.

Bowlby's attachment theory arose from his desire to understand the acute distress he witnessed in institutionalized children who separated from their mothers. His ideas sprang from the fertile ground of object relations theory (Bowlby, 1988: 234). At that time, psychoanalytic theory's explanation for a child's attachment to mother centred on the child's primary motivational drive for food. The relational aspect considered being a secondary drive. These ideas conflicted with Bowlby's observation of hospitalized infants who did not readily respond to all persons who fed them. Bowlby sought another explanation which more accurately described his observations of the caretaker-child dyad. Ethological researchers provide the basis for this theory (Campbell, 2007: 351).

Bowlby's attachment theory introduced as an alternative model from which to empirically test the level of style or self-organization. Both the attachment style interview and self-report scales designed to identify the type of self-organization rather than its singular components (Bowlby, ...