Psychiatric assessment of competency to care for a new-born.

General hospital consultation psychiatrists are sometimes asked to assess the ability of a recently delivered mother to safely care for her new-born at home. There are surprisingly few papers in the literature that deal with this problem. The authors review their experience with 56 women referred by a maternity unit over a 10 year period and discuss the demographic characteristics, diagnosis, management, and outcome of their intervention. They discuss how such an assessment should be carried out and review the literature. Some conclusions are drawn about high risk factors, and the need for early identification of these mother-infant pairs as part of primary prevention. They point out the need to take decisive action when the infant's safety appears to be seriously at risk and note that the mothers and infants in their group have done fairly well during the follow-up period with appropriate treatment, teaching and supervision.