Death Anxiety in the Context of Religion, Personality and Life Meanings.

Previous studies on the context between death anxiety and religion do not provide any clear evidence regarding "anxiety buffer" function. In this explorative study, death anxiety and attitude to death were determined in the context of mood, personality and meaning of life among groups of Muslims ( = 60) and Christian Protestants ( = 60). Death anxiety and attitude to death were assessed using the Bochum questionnaire for recording death anxiety and attitudes to death.

Computer-based mother-infant interaction analysis and mental functioning in postpartum depression.

Background: Among mothers suffering from postpartum depression (PD), 10-13% additionally experience a mother-infant interaction disturbance that causes a severe mental health risk for the infant. Besides depressive symptomology, the underlying factors promoting dysfunctional maternal interaction behavior have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, we examined potential relationships between computer-based mother-infant interaction among postpartum depressed dyads and maternal mental functioning.

Capacities for meta-cognition, social cognition, and alexithymia in postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression (PPD), a female-specific disorder, is the most common medical complication associated with childbirth (10-20%). The pathological relevance of emotion processing, meta-cognition, alexithymia, and social cognition to PPD is unclear. We tested 25 mothers with PPD (mean age: 30.

Differences in interactional behaviour in postpartum depression with and without pre-existing mental disorder.

Background: Mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) show impaired affects and behaviour patterns in the mother-child interaction, which affects an infant's emotional and cognitive development and the maternal course of disease. However, impairment of the mother-child relationship does not occur in every case of PPD.

Aim: The aim of this exploratory-descriptive video-based study was to investigate the possible associations between mother-child interactions and aspects of maternal biography and clinical history, with a focus on pre-existing mental disorder.

[Postpartum depression and migration].

Psychiatric research and care increasingly explore the connection between mental health and migration; however, it is striking that only a small number of analyses exist on the effect of migration on mental ailments specific to women. For example, even though postpartum depression regularly occurs among women with a migration background, in Germany and internationally there is a lack of knowledge on the epidemiology, particularly with respect to factors causing or contributing to postpartum depression among women with a migration background. Prospectively, culturally specific treatment options for women with a migration background are necessary to prevent chronification and subsequent harm to the mother and other family members.

[German version of the Marcé-Clinical-Checklist as a basic documentation for inpatient mother-and-baby units: evaluation of the MKE Herten data].

Objective: Evaluation of the psychiatric mother-and-child treatment, the goal being to find predictive factors for a positive treatment result.

Methods: Statistical assessment of 166 treatment dyads by using the Marcé-Clinical-Checklist (11/2006-12/2011).

Results: About 90% of (women) patients show a positive success of the treatment.

[Measuring mother-child relationship: a German instrument for both self-assessment and assessment by others (SF-MKI)].

Childbearing, from the standpoint of psychological medicine, is the most complex event in human experience. Recently delivered mothers are vulnerable to the whole spectrum of general psychiatric disorders, as well as those resulting from the physical and psychological changes of childbirth. Even if most depressed mothers do not have a relationship problem with their neonates, new mothers who are mentally ill may be dysfunctional and experience impaired communication with their newborns.