Mothers who kill their own children are unusual women whose offences often elicit fear, horror and condemnation in others. Psychiatrists may be asked to assess such women to explore the relationship between the offence and maternal mental illness, and the potential risk to other children. In this chapter, I discuss some available data on mothers who kill, in terms of criminal justice statistics, and review accounts of motives for such killings. I briefly discuss the legal processes that mother who kill must face, and the role of the psychiatrist. I then discuss some recent research about the role of maternal attachment security in relation to attitudes towards children and the transition to motherhood and the potential for psychological disorder that arise during that transition. I also comment on social factors, such as the role of partners and fathers. I conclude with some discussion about the management of cases where mental illness is a risk factor for filicide, and the associated child protection issues that may arise in such cases.

Personality disorder (PD) is a complex condition, which has been the subject of both debate and research. However, maternal PD has only been the focus of research in the last two decades. In this chapter I discuss that research in the context of what is known generally about PD, as a disorder with a predictable presentation of signs and symptoms; an aetiology, and indications for effective treatment. There has been more research on maternal PD in the last 15 years, which shows that mothers with PD may struggle to care for their children, especially in the postnatal period, and their mental health may also deteriorate during pregnancy. In this chapter I describe the issues described above and discuss how clinicians approach the management of mothers with PD. I place special emphasis on the impact of maternal PD on mother-child relationships and attachment, and the implications for child health.

This chapter is devoted to developing and clarifying one of the most unique and important constructs of attachment theory: the internal working models (IWMs) by which relationships influence other relationships and personality. We begin by describing how IWMs develop, discuss different definitions and conceptualizations of IWMs associated with different developmental stages, and then offer a new way of thinking about IWMs as both implicit and explicit representations that function at different levels of awareness. We then discuss factors that promote stability and change in IWMs, highlighting how earlier experiences with attachment figures may shape subsequent IWMs associated with other attachment figures. We next present a framework outlining the conditions under which IWMs associated with specific attachment figures earlier in life can become “activated” to influence how people think, feel, and/or behave with their current attachment figures. We conclude by proposing several promising directions for future research.

A substantial portion of adult health is programmed in the first 1,000 days after conception. Birthweight is a good indicator of fetal development. Low birthweight leads to compromised neural development. Preconception stresses have health impacts, as do prenatal ones. Natural experiments have demonstrated the adverse health impacts of various early-life stresses. Secure infant attachment to caregivers, with much global variation, leads to salutary health outcomes. Trauma or abuse in early life leads to many health compromises. Stress causes much chronic pain in the US, leading to people there consuming most of the world’s opioids. Beneficial posttraumatic growth may occur. Poverty policies affecting early life lead to adverse adult health outcomes

In this chapter, we provide a brief history of attachment research, probably one of the more fascinating stories in modern developmental psychology. We then summarize the main concepts, ideas, and research on attachment through the progressive answering of a set of eight basic questions. We then turn our attention to parenting, and how parents’ interaction with their offspring influences children’s development. Before we do, however, we examine more closely the logic of parenting from an evolutionary perspective.

Vicarious life stories are mental representation of other people’s life stories that integrate the other person’s past with the person’s lived present and projected future, for example “my mother’s story.” Taking as our starting point the influential paper by Habermas and Bluck (2000), which pointed to parallels between personal and vicarious life stories, we expand the conceptual space for vicarious life stories to include vicarious life story schema, vicarious memory and future projection, and biographical reasoning. We then discuss the potential differences between vicarious and personal life stories, including their different sources (direct experience versus conversation). In the second part of the chapter, we review empirical studies showing that vicarious life stories are related to personal life stories and discuss the possible explanations for these relations, as well as associations between vicarious life stories and mental health. Finally, we argue that vicarious life stories serve unique social functions in attachment relationships and in supporting sophisticated perspective-taking as a part of empathic understanding of the other person.

A thorough and detailed understanding of normal development in childhood provides a basis upon which we can build knowledge of children’s mental health difficulties. Development refers to expected patterns of change over time, beginning at conception and continuing throughout the lifespan. It is a lifelong process and encompasses different domains, including the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive.

Is the way my child plays with others suggestive of Autism? Could his bad dreams indicate anxiety? Does the fact she can’t sit through a whole film mean she has ADHD? Only with an in-depth knowledge of what is developmentally ‘normal’, can we begin to elicit whether behaviours that deviate from these norms might indicate disorder. This is the basis of the developmental psychopathology that underpins the practice of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. What is considered ‘normal’ development involves a complex and continuous interplay between genetic and environmental (including sociocultural) factors. Despite some variation, there is a consistency and reliability of functioning in children that remains steadfast from generation to generation.

In this chapter we will consider areas including the milestones of development in early childhood; attachment theory, temperament and personality; theories of emotional, cognitive and social development; and development in adolescence.

This chapter reviews a broad spectrum in Child and Adolescent Mental Health; that of the anxiety disorders. The chapter briefly introduces the concept of attachment and touches on how attachment disorders, and attachment styles evolve. It focuses in on PTSD and C-PTSD, with a particular spotlight on C-PTSD as a new diagnostic concept, and considers its importance in understanding presentations of trauma and emotional dysregulation in children and young people. The chapter also investigates the epidemiology and course of anxiety disorders; and considers the differentiating features of the different presentations. We finish with an overview of interventions, including the rise of computerised approaches in treating the anxiety disorders in young people.

Chapter 10 approaches recent research on birth and infancy through a crisis-oriented framework. Birth and infancy are processes of transformations involving caregivers, kin, community, and the state. These take place in sociocultural and ecological contexts, which are many times also changing and adapting to known and unpredictable situations and possibilities. After introducing crisis as a pertinent concept for the study of birth and infancy beyond normative developmental frameworks, the authors describe works on notions of personhood, self, and attachments as processes involving lifecycle and non-lifecycle crises. The chapter approaches crises as disruptions that take place at different levels and temporalities, which are intrinsic to the understanding of birth and infancy contextually, highlighting long-term critical events that permeate societies and are intertwined with policy trends. The final section examines the crises of infancy, including attachment processes entangled in higher-order social crises, such as among socially and economically oppressed populations living with conditions of extreme precarity.

This chapter considers the role of individual differences in attachment in the development of alternative reproductive strategies as conceptualized in evolutionary lifespan models, with a special emphasis on psychosocial acceleration theory (Belsky et al., 1991). Psychosocial acceleration theory is the primogenitor of several evolutionary lifespan models based on life history theory principles. These models describe how harsh and/or unpredictable childhoods forecast developmental adaptations and reproductive strategies in adulthood. Harshness and unpredictability levels should affect the adaptive calibration of the mating–parenting tradeoff, with harsher or more unpredictable environments forecasting greater mating effort at the expense of parenting effort. The attachment system has been proposed as an important mediator between early environmental exposure and reproductive strategies in adulthood. This chapter provides an overview of evolutionary lifespan models through the years and presents the theoretical rationale for the mediating role of attachment representations. This chapter then reviews empirical findings demonstrating that insecure attachment representations mediate the effects of childhood unpredictability on mating and parenting outcomes in adulthood, including unrestricted sociosexuality, unprotected sex, intimate partner violence perpetration, low relationship quality, negating parental orientations, and low parental support. This chapter concludes with directions for future research on environmentally induced adaptive calibration of life history variables.

Our understanding of the stability in attachment during the first two decades of life is limited because i) ambiguity concerning the term ‘stability’ and ii) children have not been repeatedly followed up, leaving how attachment develops from childhood to adolescence uncharted. A birth cohort sample from Norway (n = 952) was examined with observational measures of attachment at ages 4, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 16 years to provide data on four aspects of stability: i) stability at the group level: avoidant and disorganized attachment decreased throughout development; ii) stability relative to the group increased with increasing age; secure attachment at ages 4 and 6 was weakly correlated with attachment in adolescence; other attachment strategies evinced no stability; iii) stability relative to oneself followed the above correlational pattern, but two latent classes both best described the individual trajectories of secure and ambivalent attachment; iv) stability of changes: changes in attachment styles from 4 to 6 did not forecast level or change in attachment in adolescence. Finally, I found little support for an early-formed prototype being responsible for stability. In sum, there was little continuity in attachment from childhood to adolescence, and the development in security and ambivalence might both follow two different trajectories.

Describe some important features of infant–caregiver relationships; evaluate the role of early life experiences on later development; understand what emotions are for and how they develop.