Look - Your Baby is Talking to You.

It is well documented that the formation of the early relation between parents and infant has a significant impact on the child's mental, social and cognitive development and competencies. The early relationship formation in the first year in the infants' life gets the best conditions when parents are able to interpret, understand and respond to the infants signal adequately. Symptoms of mental illness can affect a person's ability to respond to their environment and thereby their parenting capabilities. Research have found that parental psychopathology may interfere with a healthy interaction with the infant by reducing the ability to be sensitively attuned and responsive to the infant's signal, needs and cues due to the nature of the psychiatric symptoms. The aim of this study is to investigate what potential lies within the postpartum stay at the obstetric department and in the transition to the primary health care sector for vulnerable families and to develop an intervention that will help increase the parents sensitivity towards their new born infant in order to enter a healthy early relationship formation which will be measureable on short term in the prevalence of maternal post-partum depression. The study is a prospective mixed-method study consisting of three sub-studies. The first study is a register-based study which aims to investigate how the proportion and the absolute risk of children with predefined adverse developmental outcomes is distributed between families defined as level three or four compared to families defined as level one and two. The second study aims to uncover needs and preferences of the vulnerable families and to investigate the experiences of the health care professionals. It is explored by in-depth family interviews with families discharged from the obstetric department and focus group interviews with health care professionals (nurses and health visitors) who are responsible for the care delivered to vulnerable families. Subsequen