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Repetitive Negative Thinking and Impaired Mother–Infant Bonding: A Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

Recent theoretical models suggest that repetitive negative thinking might be a key mechanism explaining the negative effects of maternal psychopathology on mother–infant relations. While an emerging body of research largely supports this idea, the relative importance of differences in the trajectory of repetitive negative thinking during and after pregnancy for mother–infant bonding as well as maternal depressive symptoms is currently unknown. Therefore, we investigated associations between the course of maternal repetitive negative thinking during pregnancy and after birth and mother–infant-bonding and maternal depressive symptoms in a longitudinal study. The overall level of repetitive negative thinking was a significant predictor of mother–infant bonding, maternal anxiety and rejection in dealing with her infant four months after birth. Furthermore, differences in the trajectory of repetitive negative thinking predicted bonding, but not anxiety or rejection. The overall levels of repetitive negative thinking as well as the differences in the trajectory of repetitive negative thinking were significant predictors of maternal depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that changes of repetitive negative thinking during and after pregnancy can increase the risk of postpartum depressive symptoms.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the women who participated in this study. Thank you to Lisa Kösters for help with data collection and data entry.

Funding

This study was funded by a Grant from the German Research Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to Sabine Seehagen (2154/4-1) and Tobias Teismann (TE747/2-1).

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Author notes

  1. Sabine Seehagen

    Present address: The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Dana Schmidt, Sabine Seehagen & Silvia Schneider

  2. Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Hochschule Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

    Gerrit Hirschfeld

  3. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

    Silja Vocks

  4. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Tobias Teismann

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  1. Dana Schmidt
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Correspondence to Dana Schmidt.

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Conflict of Interest

Dana Schmidt, Sabine Seehagen, Gerrit Hirschfeld, Silja Vocks, Silvia Schneider and Tobias Teismann declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Schmidt, D., Seehagen, S., Hirschfeld, G. et al. Repetitive Negative Thinking and Impaired Mother–Infant Bonding: A Longitudinal Study. Cogn Ther Res 41, 498–507 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9823-8

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