Maternal drug addiction: Mother-child relationship and attachment-informed interventions. La tossicodipendenza materna: Il legame madre-bambino e modelli di intervento basati sull’attaccamento.

Maternal drug addiction: Mother-child relationship and attachment-informed inter - ventions Maternal substance abuse constitutes a severe risk factor for the child’s emotional and relational development, especially in terms of caregiving environment. Attachment theory offers a reliable theoretical framework to comprehend the influence that drug addiction exerts on the quality of the adult state of mind, the parental function of protection and care towards the child and the quality of the mother-child relationship that, in turn, affect the development of infant attachment. As a matter of fact, national and international studies observe that drug addicted mothers and their children show a prevalence of insecure attachment, even though they fail in identifying a predominant model of insecurity. Nevertheless, these results have fostered the implementation of treatment programs that focus specifically on the addicted mother-child relationship, based partly on already available intervention protocols and partly on new specific features accordingly to this clinical population. The present review presents the outcomes of studies on the adult and on the infant attachment in dyads where the mother is drug-addicted and describes the treatment protocols based on attachment theory that are currently available. Keywords: drug-addicted mothers, mother-infant attachment, attachment and drug addiction, attachment-informed interventions, attachment and psychopathology.