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Mothers' Adaptation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: An Examination of the Effects of Meaning Making, Control and Self-Enhancement on Depression

With over 400,000 infants being hospitalized in the NICU annually, it is important to understand adjustment in their mothers. Taylor’s cognitive theory of adaptation asserts that three factors, meaning making, control, and self-enhancement, influence positive adjustment in a crisis situation such as a NICU hospitalization. Since it has never been examined, the purpose of the current study was to test the utility of Taylor’s model in mothers with an infant in the NICU. Data was collected from mothers with an infant in the NICU (N = 181) and the main hypothesis was that meaning making, control, and self-enhancement would explain a significant portion of variance in depression scores in mothers with an infant in the NICU. Results from this study did not support this hypothesis. Still, this study is important in guiding future research to better understand the adjustment process of mothers with an infant in the NICU.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-3294
Date06 October 2010
CreatorsRussell, Claire
PublisherVCU Scholars Compass
Source SetsVirginia Commonwealth University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rights© The Author

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