Research project Attachment among mothers with intellectual disability or ADHD
Mothers with cognitive difficulties, such as intellectual disability (ID) and ADHD, are at increased risk for lowered caregiving ability. However, there is a notable lack of research about factors contributing to this increased risk, which hampers the ability to provide supportive interventions.
International theory and research increasingly emphasize the importance of a broad model of parenting for parents with cognitive difficulties, which takes into account factors beyond cognitive difficulties per se. Such factors include the parents’ childhood experiences, psychological health, social support, exposure to trauma, and socioeconomic adversity.
One additional such factor regards parental attachment representations, but there is currently no empirical knowledge about attachment representations among parents with cognitive difficulties.
The study therefore examines attachment representations among mothers with intellectual disability or ADHD, in relation to various influencing factors, including the mothers’ own experiences of care during childhood, experiences of abuse and trauma, psychological health, access to social support, and cumulative psychosocial risk. These factors are also examined in relation to caregiving-relevant factors among the mothers, such as parental reflective functioning.
The project builds on a previous project, in which we found that a high proportion of mothers with mild intellectual disability had been subjected to abuse and trauma. Such experiences also emerged as a risk factor for lowered sensitivity and specific emotion-interpretation difficulties among the mothers, and insecure attachment among their children.
Project members
Project managers
Pehr Granqvist
Professor
Members
Tommie Forslund
Associate Professor
Mårten Hammarlund
Guest
