Infant-related intrusive harm thoughts

 
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I’ve written this section because I really want to share this information with you. Lots of parents experience these kinds of baby-related harm thoughts and this is completely normal. But because of the stigma and shame, people don’t feel able to talk about them openly - which means they can be experienced as really upsetting.

Here’s what I’m going to talk about:

  • What are harm thoughts?

  • What can harm thoughts be about?

  • Examples of harm thoughts

  • Does experiencing harm thoughts mean I may harm my baby?

  • Making sense of harm thoughts

  • For mums – how to manage harm thoughts?

  • For professionals

  • Future directions

  • References and further reading

It’s important to add that fathers experience infant-related harm thoughts too. For example in one US-based study interviewing 77 mothers and 40 fathers, nearly three quarters of mums and two thirds of dads experienced these kinds of thoughts (Abramovitz et al, 2003). As the evidence base on baby-related harm thoughts is small, my research is exploratory. This means the focus of my study and this website will be on mums. More research involving dads is needed.