Reflexive Function of Pre- School Children’s Parents consulting in Child Psychiatry : an Exploratory study (Urfer et al.,2015)
FRAMEWORK
To begin with, some children suffer from symptoms and disorders. For example, they feel anxious, have eating disorders or have developpemental or neurologic disorder. Children encounter difficulty in school about their learning and relationships with others children. This is particulary relevant for those children who have a different thinking in comparison with children in the same age from general population.
In addition, it’s difficult to make themselves understood by a teacher, a friend, a parent, a sister, a brother because they can not express feelings and thoughts. Thus, they feel distress to meet and have apropriate relationships. As a consequence their well-being and their environnement are threathen. In general, doctors and teachers advise parents to consult child psychiatry department. Parents make apointment with medical and paramedical professionals. Canada and France share a common issue of mental health of children.
Moreover, Urfer, Achim, Terradas, Bisaillon, Dubois-Comtois, & Lebel (2015) presented the study of Kim-Cohen et al. (2003). This study concluded that disorders in childhood are following in adulthood. For this reason, Urfer et al. (2015) recommanded to explore more deeply the transition of mental disorder from childhood to adulthood.
They focus on Reflexive Function as a protective factor against evolution of mental disorder. This function could enable to understand better the psychological functionning. Those authors define as a capacity to perceive and interpret own behaviors and those behaviors of others in mental states. This concept is linked with mental flexibility. Besides, this reflexive function is developped with attachment’s figure. Indeed, development of reflexive function of children depend of reflexive function of theirs parents. Children consulting in children psychiatry have poor reflexive function because of their parents who use more action than speaking.
Despite the fact that researchers demonstrate it is relevant to study reflexive function ‘s parents who have children suffer from psychopathology, litterature lacks of knowledges about reflexive function to understand functionnal psychology and associated difficulties of children and don’t make sufficient recommandations about interventions. That ‘s why authors want to explore more reflexive function.
METHOD
This exploratory study have the following aims : evaluate and describe level of development of reflexive function of parents consulting in child psychiatry (1), evaluate and describe affective experience of parents in terms or parent- children relationships (2), acquire information parents about their perceptions about themselves and relationships with their children (3), measure links beetwen reflexive function and affective experience in relationship with their children (4).
Ten mothers and three fathers took part to study in department of child psychiatry in Sacré- Cœur Hospital in Montréal. They were interviewed by the Parent Developmental Interview- Review Revised (PDI-R) (Slade et al., 2002). This tool enable to measure Reflexive Function, affective experience, representation of parent on their parent function and relationship with their children.
Descriptives statistics are used from two analys’s method which were a cotation system of reflexive function and cotation system of PDI.
RESULTS
Authors lay out different results in comparison with working hypothesis. There is no significative difference between mothers and fathers considering the weak sample of men about findings of reflexive function.
If we consider reflexive function in general, parents who consulting in child psychiatry have poorer function reflexive than parents in general population. This means that they can identify and recognize own mental state or those of children but they can not consider that implying on.
If we focus on the cotation of questions and thematics, results demonstrate a lower level reflexive function of participants in comparison with others parents. Parents can identify their mental state but it is difficult to them to elaborate in terms of mental state about themselves and relationships. Specifically, they have more difficulty to elaborate about a situation without strong emotion and situation relative to attachment system. For example, they can identify own state mental when they are anger but can not associate with their behavior’s children.
Concerning findings of affective relations, mothers have more positive and negative relation with children than fathers. But fathers identify more positive affective experience than mothers.
Contrary to researcher’s expectations, statistics analysis don not highlight a link between reflexive function and affective experience.
DISCUSSION
Then, researchers interpret their results. Parents can not identify mental state deeply, can not explore own psychological functionning and can not regulate themselves and relationship with children.
Mothers have more intense relation with children both positive and negative side in comparison with fathers. They feel more confident in their competences of mother and focus on attachment need but they also feel guilty and anger.
Nonetheless, we can add limits to this study. There is not a control group. Beside there are not sufficient male participants to compare female and male.
CONCLUSION
The authors present some relevant results. They identify that parents have difficulty to consider mental state for them and children and their relational impact. Some differences exist between fathers and mothers.
This study offers some implications about interventions. Professionals could support parents to develop their reflexive function to better understand their mental state and their children’s mental state in order to tolerate emotions and regulate relationships.