Because of the clinical relevance of PAD, controlled studies and specialized programmes for prevention and treatment are urgently required.

In healthy mother-infant dyads, interactions are characterized by a pattern of matching and mismatching interactive states with quick reparation of mismatches into matches. In contrast, dyads in which mothers have postpartum depression show impaired mother-infant interaction patterns over the first few months of the infant's life. The majority of studies that have examined such interaction patterns have drawn on community samples rather than on depressed inpatient samples of mothers who were in a state of current depression at the time of assessment. To date, no study has investigated specific microanalytic patterns of interactive coordination between depressed German mothers and their infants using the Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm (FFSF). The primary goal of this study was to evaluate specific patterns of dyadic coordination and the capacity for repairing states of miscoordination in an inpatient sample of postpartum currently depressed mothers and their infants as compared with a healthy control group. A sample of 28 depressed inpatient German mothers and their infants (age range = 1-8 months, M age = 4.06 months) and 34 healthy dyads (range = 1-8 months, M age = 3.89 months) were videotaped while engaging in the FFSF. A focus was placed on the play and reunion episodes. Compared with healthy dyads, dyads with depressed mothers showed less coordination of positive matched states and longer latencies when repairing interactive mismatching states into positive matched states. Clinical implications are discussed.

Specific patterns of interaction emerging in the first months of life are related to processes regulating mutual affects in the mother-child dyad. Particularly important in this respect are the processes of ‘matching’ and ‘interactive repair’. According to previous research results, these interaction processes are significantly impaired in mothers with postpartum depression, exerting a detrimental influence on the infant's emotional and cognitive development as well as on the course of the mother's illness. It is not yet clear, however, whether a recovery from depression is also connected to a favourable development of these interactional behaviour patterns. The study will correlate patterns of interactive affect regulation in the first months of life with the course of the mother's depressive illness. To achieve this, interactions of mothers with postpartum depression and their infants will be evaluated using the Still Face Design at two assessment times (T1: acute phase of depression, T2: remission). Results will be compared to a control group of healthy mothers with age- and sex-matched children. Clinical and theoretical implications will be discussed.

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