Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Assessing Maltreatment Risk in Mothers with Major Mental Illness

Parental functioning in mothers with major mental illness is often seriously impaired. Studies on rates of custody loss in this population suggest the incidence of child maltreatment is high, since about 60% of mothers with major mental illness are not raising their own children. Not all mentally ill mothers are at risk for child maltreatment, however. Despite a growing awareness of the problems involved in the assessment of maltreatment risk in women with major mental illness, there are no systematic studies on the determinants of parenting risk in this population. A major aim of this poster is to present findings from a pilot study on factors that distinguish mothers who are at high and low risk for child maltreatment in order to guide assessments and to develop more effective treatments of these vulnerable parents and their children. Data from a sample of 50 women with major mental illness were used to construct a case control study to determine factors that distinguish women who are at high vs. low risk for child maltreatment. The study specially compared two groups of women: (1) A high risk group (N=25) of mothers with a major mental disorder who had maltreated their children in the past; and (2) a low risk group (N=25) of mothers with a major mental disorder who had never lost custody of their children and where there was no evidence for child maltreatment. The two groups were matched in severity of mental illness. Drawing on attachment and ecological theories, the study compared the two women on four domains of parental functioning: (1) maternal attitudes about childrearing and children as assessed by the Parent Opinion Questionnaire; (2) observed mother-child behavior as assessed through the Crittenden CARE Index; (3) maternal support as assessed through the Social Support Inventory; and (4) maternal insight into mental illness as assessed by the Schedule for Assessment of Insight. Spearman’s rho for continuous variables and t-tests for categorical variables were used to examine associations between maternal risk status and the four predictor variables. All analyses were conducted with SPSS software. As hypothesized, mothers in the high risk group were significantly more prone than mothers in the low risk group to have: (1) more aberrant attitudes about childrearing: (2) more intrusive, controlling and uninvolved behaviors with their child; (3) smaller support networks; and (4) less insight into their illness. The articulation of factors that contribute to or ameliorate child maltreatment is integral to both assessment and prevention efforts. The study thus fills an important gap in our understanding of factors that contribute to maltreatment risk in women with major mental illness.

See more of Poster Session II
See more of Oral and Poster

See more of Celebrating a Decade of SSWR (January 13 - 16, 2005)