Trauma exposure is extremely common in countries affected by conflicts or natural disasters. The results of the microanalysis of interaction can shed light on the fundamental role of intermodal exchanges between mother and infant in trauma transmission during mothers' trauma reactivation. We found no significant associations between interaction and infant gender and age, the severity of traumatic experience, mothers' depression and anxiety symptoms, and the country of residence. The “absence” of the mother during trauma recall seems to have repercussions on infants' behavior and interaction infants show coping strategies that are discussed. The mother-child interaction “infant self-stimulation-mother looks absent” and “Infant sucks the breast-mother looks absent” occurred more often during the mothers' traumatic narrations. The data analysis highlighted significant differences in mothers, children and their interaction during the “traumatic narration”: mothers touched and looked at the infant less, looked more absent and smiled less, and looked less at the interviewer infants looked less at the interviewer, and sucked the breast more. Impact of traumatic event (IES-R), the level of depression and anxiety (HAD) were investigated in order to have a holistic understanding of the trauma transmission mechanism. Three minutes of each sequence were coded through a specific grid for microanalysis, according to different communication modalities (touch, visual, and vocal), for both the mother and the child. Twenty-four mother-infant dyadic interactions of traumatized mothers and children aged from 1.5 to 30 months Central Africa, Chad, and Cameroon were videotaped during three sequences: a neutral initial session (baseline) exploring mothers' representations of the infant and of their bonding a second sequence, “the traumatic narration,” in which mothers were asked to talk about the difficult events they had experienced and a third sequence focusing on a neutral subject. We investigated the impact of mothers' post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms on the quality of the dyadic interaction by conducting a microanalysis of mother-infant interactions at specific moments when trauma was recalled, compared to more neutral moments. The objective of the study was to examine the process of mother to infant trauma transmission among traumatized mothers in humanitarian contexts.

6Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades, Assistance Publique Hopitaux De Paris, Paris, France.4Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France.2Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France.Elisabetta Dozio 1 * Marion Feldman 2 Cécile Bizouerne 1 Elise Drain 3 Mathilde Laroche Joubert 2 Malika Mansouri 4 Marie Rose Moro 5 Lisa Ouss 6

Intergenerational trauma research