Social and affective development in infants with a manic-depressive parent

The authors observed seven infants who had a manic-depressive parent longitudinally in a structured laboratory setting with their mothers at ages 12, 15, and 18 months. The infants' attachment and affiliative behaviors and the patterning of their affective responses were assessed according to systematic measures and compared with those of a matched control group. The proband infants appeared to show a disturbance in the quality of their attachments to their mothers as well as a generalized disturbance in their capacities to regulate their emotions adaptively. There appeared to be an increasing severity of disturbance with increasing age. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.