Preterm birth is a stressful event for families. In particular, the unexpectedly early delivery may cause negative feelings in mothers and fathers. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between preterm birth, parental stress and negative feelings, and the environmental setting of NICU. 21 mothers (age = 36.00 ± 6.85) and 19 fathers (age = 34.92 ± 4.58) of preterm infants (GA = 30.96 ± 2.97) and 20 mothers (age = 40.08 ± 4.76) and 20 fathers (age = 40.32 ± 6.77) of full-term infants (GA = 39.19 ± 1.42) were involved. All parents filled out the Parental Stressor Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Impact of Event Scale Revised, Profile of Mood States, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and the Post-Partum Bonding Questionnaire. Our data showed differences in emotional reactions between preterm and full-term parents. Results also revealed significant differences between mothers and fathers’ responses to preterm birth in terms of stress, negative feelings, and perceptions of social support. A correlation between negative conditions at birth (e.g., birth weight and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit stay) and higher scores in some scales of Impact of Event Scale Revised, Profile of Mood States and Post-Partum Bonding Questionnaire were found. Neonatal Intensive Care Unit may be a stressful place both for mothers and fathers. It might be useful to plan, as soon as possible, interventions to help parents through the experience of the premature birth of their child and to begin an immediately adaptive mode of care.

Aims: The aims of this study were to explore parents’ stress levels and negative feelings after premature births and to identify the risk factors related to parents’ stress and negative feelings during their children’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stay.Background: Preterm birth is a multi-problematic event that may put the babies in danger for both their medical and neurophysiological conditions and could have a negative impact on both the mother–father relationship and the parent–child interactions.Methods: The study involved 43 mothers and 38 fathers of preterm infants. All participants filled out the Parental Stressor Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the Profile of Mood States.Findings: The results revealed significant differences between mothers’ and fathers’ responses to preterm births in terms of both stress and negative feelings. We found that, for mothers, their own young age and the baby’s need for respiratory support were significant predictors of stress; for fathers, their own young age and the baby’s lower gestational age and worse condition at birth were significant predictors of stress and negative feelings. The NICU may be a stressful place both for mothers and fathers. Identifying which mothers and fathers are at risk immediately after their children are born could help to direct specific interventions that can reduce these parents’ stress and prevent them from negative feelings.

A growing body of research highlights how communities traumatized by conflict and displacement suffer from long-term mental and psychosocial illnesses. The Russian army’s attack on Ukraine has resulted in an estimated 10 million people being internally or externally displaced from Ukraine, of whom more than 3.8 million have left Ukraine to seek refuge elsewhere in Europe. Soleterre has decided to launch an intervention to provide psychological support to Ukrainian refugees and IDPs, aimed at containing war trauma, assessing the severity of symptoms, and enabling those affected to receive psychological support. The intervention model envisioned the administration of an intake form to provide a rapid collection of qualitative and quantitative information for those arriving in Poland or Lviv from Ukraine. Our results showed how most of the samples reported high or very high levels of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances. Moreover, results highlighted how being close to families or being able to keep in touch with them work as a protective factor in enhancing resilience, as well as a support network. These findings underscored the importance of re-thinking our perception of “family” in a broader sense, considering the new facets it can take on in post-conflict situations.

Several studies have focused on neonatal maternal separation (MS) to investigate behavioural and neuroendocrine reactions to lack of contact, but only a few have focused on early separation in the first days or weeks after birth. This literature review investigates the vital importance of contact and touch by exploring how skin-to-skin contact (SSC) regulates stress in the mother–infant relationship. Various databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and ScienceDirect were searched for literature published between 2015 and 2020. From 1141 articles, 22 were declared eligible. The reviewed articles showed how SSC regulates child stress by biological indicators such as the autonomic nervous system (ANS), heart rate variability (HRV), cortisol, and oxytocin. This research concludes the importance of SSC for stress regulation, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. With no research to date indicating a possible risk of neonatal COVID-19 transmission following SSC, SSC should continue to be practiced for all women, as recommended by the WHO.

Background: It is well known that mother–child relationships may be affected by maternal psychological disorders, but, at present, few experimental studies have investigated the negative impact of postpartum post-traumatic stress\ud disorder (PTSD) symptoms on child behaviour using the Still Face paradigm.\ud Objective: The aim of this exploratory work is to investigate whether postpartum stress symptoms may affect mother–child relationships. The underlying\ud hypothesis is that the persistence of postpartum stress symptoms may have a negative outcome on the mother’s tuning with the child. Methods: A sample of\ud 19 pregnant women (mean age = 31.31; SD = 4.50) attended the four phases of the research, from the seventh month of pregnancy. Maternal personality\ud characteristics were assessed by MMPI-2. The Perinatal PTSD Questionnaire was used to assess PTSD symptoms two days and two months after delivery.\ud Three months after childbirth the dyads attended the Still Face paradigm.\ud Results: Data have shown that the persistence of PTSD symptoms has a different effect on early mother–child interactions than those of mothers who\ud have not had postpartum stress symptoms. Conclusion: These data allow us to hypothesise that there are some baseline difficulties in women with PTSD\ud symptoms in producing a positive interactive engagement, not only in relation to the break of interaction caused by the Still episode

This paper aims to investigate if the dyadic interactive behaviours were influenced by parental stress and feelings both in preterm and full-term mother-child dyads. 45 mothers (age = 35.29 ± 5.38) and fathers (age = 36.77 ± 6.89) of preterm infants (GA = 30.25 ± 2.95; BW = 1288.02 ± 488.76), and 36 mothers (age = 32.60 ± 4.56) and fathers (age = 35.54 ± 5.16) of full-term (GA = 39.88 ± 1.38; BW = 3156.39 ± 493.81) were involved. Parents filled out the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R), Profile of Mood States (POMS) and Parenting Stress Index Short Form (PSI-SF) and interactive behaviours (Global Rating Scale) was videotaped after 3 months. Mothers of preterm children showed higher level of Intrusiveness (Mpreterm = 4.07 ± .74, Mfullterm = 4.39 ± .51, t = 2.22, p = .029) and Remoteness (Mpreterm = 4.45 ± .83, Mfullterm = 4.79 ± .34, t = 2.51, p = .015) than mothers of term children. In preterm mothers' lower levels of Sensitivity, higher levels of Intrusiveness, Remoteness and Depression are associated with the presence of negative feelings and parental stress in both parents. Moreover, higher children Distress is associated to parental negative feelings, paternal stress and post-traumatic symptoms. A higher score of parental negative feelings and parental stress predicted lower scores in Global RatingScale dimensions. Our results underline that preterm birth could be a risk factor for the co-construction of interactive exchanges between mother and premature baby. This study could help practitioners to better consider parental roles and to carry out specific supportive interventions for both parents and children.