Treatment – Mother–infant inpatient units

Abstract

Infants of parents with psychiatric disorders may be particularly vulnerable and have a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Until the second half of the 20th century, women and infants were cared for separately. Today, hospitalisation of women with their babies in psychiatric mother-baby units enables psychiatric care of women and promotion of parent-infant interactions and child development. The distribution of psychiatric mother-baby units around the world, as well as within countries, varies strongly. Reasons for this may be related to the absence of national perinatal mental health policies related to psychiatric mother-baby unit location, differences in sources of referral for admission, and criteria for psychiatric mother-baby unit admission. Two principal national epidemiologic studies, in England and in France and Belgium, have described issues related to discharge from such care, as have smaller local studies, but no epidemiologic studies have yet demonstrated that joint inpatient psychiatric mother-baby unit care is cost-effective compared with separate care.