Research Article
Sudden Infant Dead: Reaction to Bereavement in Siblings and Mothers
Benedetta Bellini1*, Alessandra Cescut2, Barbara Caravale3, Federica Galli4,5, Valeria Paravicini2, Franco Lucchese2 and Vincenzo Guidetti11Department of Pediatrics and Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Odontoiatrics, ‘Sapienza’ University, Rome, Via dei Sabelli n°108, 00185, Roma, Italy
2Department of Clinic and Dynamic Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, ‘Sapienza’ University, Rome, Via dei Marsi n° 78, 00185, Roma, Italy
3Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, Via dei Marsi n° 78, 00185, Roma, Italy
4National Neurological Institute C. Mondino, Pavia
5Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia
- *Corresponding Author:
- Benedetta Bellini
Department of Pediatrics and Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry
Faculty of Medicine and Odontoiatrics
‘Sapienza’ University, Rome
Via dei Sabelli n°108, 00185, Roma, Italy
E-mail: benbet@hotmail.it
Received date: June 27, 2013; Accepted date: September 17, 2013; Published date: September 21, 2013
Citation: Bellini B, Cescut A, Caravale B, Galli F, Paravicini V, et al. (2013) Sudden Infant Dead: Reaction to Bereavement in Siblings and Mothers. J Palliat Care Med 3:159. doi:10.4172/2165-7386.1000159
Copyright: © 2013 Bellini B, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: This study aims to determine if surviving siblings of children who died from Sudden Infant Dead Syndrome (SIDS) had behavioural or psychological problems and if their mothers had suffered from alexithymia.
Methods: We have enrolled 39 families (58 children). The “Mourning Group” (MG) consisted in 16 families (28 children) with following characteristics: 1) having an infant die from SIDS; 2) having at least one surviving child aged 6 to 18 years; 3) at least 8 years of mourning. The control group (CG) consisted of 23 families (30 children) free from any kind of mourning experiences. We used CBCL 6-18 questionnaire to assess behavioural and psychological problems on siblings, and TAS-20 in order to measure alexithymia in mothers.
Results: Children in the MG compared with children in the CG presented a significantly higher score in CBCL on “social problems”, whilst reported a significantly lower score on “social competencies”. Mothers in the MG compared with mothers in the CG presented significantly lower scores in the externally oriented thinking (subscale F3 of TAS). A positive significant correlation emerged between time of bereavement and difficulty in identifying feelings (subscale F1).
Conclusions: Our study confirms the presence of social difficulties in siblings born in families that experienced SIDS and shows that most of the mothers had long lasting difficulties in identifying their feelings.
