Maternal Mental Health and Newborn Intensive Care Units: Regional Experiences in Argentina

Abstract

The care of high-risk newborns has achieved remarkable progress in the last decades. However, care and attention to their parents’ physical and emotional state were not considered for a long time. Mothers and fathers of high-risk newborns go through a “double crisis”: The expected evolutionary crisis that a birth implies and the unexpected vital crisis of separation caused by the admission of the neonate with a high biological risk to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This situation of high vulnerability (biological, psychological, and familial) requires a careful look at the parental perinatal mental health, particularly regarding the development of affective disorders, especially in the mother.