Reliability and validity of the German version of the Maternal–Fetal Attachment Scale

Abstract

Our results suggest that the German version of the MFAS is a reliable and valid questionnaire to measure the emotional relationship of the mother to the unborn child during pregnancy.

Prenatal Attachment and Perinatal Depression: A Systematic Review

“…The included studies were mainly conducted in the US (10 papers) [80,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92] and in Europe (nine papers in Italy [93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101], four in Sweden [76,[102][103][104], two in Germany [105,106], one in the Netherlands [22], one in France [107], one in England [79], one in Belgium [108], and one in Portugal [75]). Four studies were carried out in Japan [81,[109][110][111], two in Australia [112,113], two in Iran [74,114], two in Turkey [78,115], one in India [116], one in Israel [117], one in Chile [118], one in Brazil [119], and one in Korea [120] (Figure 2).…”

“…Of the 41 articles that focused on pregnant women [ [74,81,95,99,101,105,110,111,116,117]. Three articles observed a positive association between prenatal depression and some dimensions of prenatal attachment [94,102,106]. These latter findings emerged within homogeneous samples of women aged 18 or older.…”

“…Thirteen studies did not highlight significant associations between these variables [76,[78][79][80]85,87,88,93,96,100,103,109,113]. Specifically, the majority of the articles (28) observed a negative association between prenatal depressive symptoms and prenatal attachment [22,75,81,84,86,[89][90][91][92]94,97,98,102,[104][105][106][107][108][110][111][112][114][115][116][117][118][119][120]. In contrast, a positive association between prenatal depression and some dimensions of prenatal attachment (i.e., the "physical contact with the fetus and sensitivity to the fetal movement" subscale of the MFAS [102], the "empathy" subscale of the German version of the MFAS [106], and the "fantasy" and the "maternal sensitivity to the fetus" factors of the PAI [94]) was found in three studies…”

“…Nineteen of the 29 studies that administered prenatal attachment instruments in the second or the third trimester of gestation underlined a significant association between the two considered variables [22,74,84,86,[90][91][92]95,97,98,101,102,[104][105][106]112,[115][116][117]: 16 studies confirmed a negative association between prenatal attachment and prenatal depression [22,84,86,[90][91][92]97,98,102,[104][105][106]112,[115][116][117] and six studies identified a negative association between prenatal attachment and postnatal depression [74,95,101,105,116,117], while a positive relation was found between prenatal depression and some factors of prenatal attachment in two studies [102,106]. Even if they assessed prenatal attachment in the recommended gestational period, ten articles did not demonstrate a significant association between prenatal attachment and prenatal depression…”

Psychische Auswirkungen der Frühgeburt auf die Eltern

“…Werte gleich oder über 10 sprechen für eine depressive Symptomatik, der Gesamtscore des Fragebogens kann Werte bis 30 annehmen. Spätere Überprüfungen des Fragebogens ergaben sehr gute interne Konsistenzen von bis zu α=0.90 und belegen ausreichend gute psychometrische Qualitäten[33]. .…”