Psych Flashcards
What is anaclitic depression?
Essentially it’s failure to thrive due to lack of attachment.
Also called hospitalism (or anaclitic depression in its sublethal form) was a pediatric diagnosis used in the 1930s to describe infants who wasted away while in hospital. The symptoms could include retarded physical development, and disruption of perceptual-motor skills and language.[1] It is now understood that this wasting disease was mostly caused by a lack of social contact between the infant and its caregivers[citation needed]. Infants in poorer hospitals were less subject to this disease since those hospitals could not afford incubators which meant that the hospital staff regularly held the infants.
[From Wikipedia, “Hospitalism”]
In reference to non-infants: “Anaclitic depression involves a person who feels dependent upon relationships with others and who essentially grieves over the threatened or actual loss of those relationships. Anaclitic depression is caused by the disruption of a caregiving relationship with a primary object and is characterized by feelings of helplessness and weakness. A person with anaclitic depression experiences intense fears of abandonment and desperately struggles to maintain direct physical contact with the need-gratifying object.”
[from https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/psychology-of-depression-psychodynamic-theories/]
