MOTHER-INFANT BONDING: A PROCESS ESSENTIAL TO THE INDIVIDUAL MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

This article results from a bibliographic research aimed to explore how contemporary research has looked upon the relation between mother-child bonding and mental health, mainly when it comes to psychoanalysis among the many theoretical available approaches. Data was collected from the Scientific Electronic Library Online – SciELO. The keywords used to retrieve articles related to the themes were mother-child bonding, attachment, hazard and mental health. Only publications in Portuguese were selected from the year of 2014. Data analysis lead to the identification of five main categories to the studies: hazard risk and protection – a very prevalent theme, pointing to a concern about the children’s and in particular babies’ physical and mental integrity. A second category would be the hazards assessment tools, as well as the parental subjectivity. Besides that, an advancement in the previously neglected theme of the father participation in the children’s development has been identified. It’s has been found to be rather common, among the analyzed studies, to have the first phase of human development regarded as a moment of symbolic associations, through experiences of physical and emotional proximity between mother and child, or the related person playing that particular role in the early years of the children. Psychoanalysis as well as psychoanalytical studies, specially those by Bowlby and Winnicott, have been found to be used as assessment resources to better understand the subjects in that point of view. It has been concluded that mental health policies, in particular those towards the humanization of the attention devoted to the mothers, either before and after birth, are rather important to the well being of both mother and children. We strongly recommend that new studies concerning the children bonding should be conducted to include the contemporary diverse options such as shared parenting and custody, adoption by homoparental couples etc.