Introduction
Evidence indicates that the prevalence of food allergy (FA) has increased in the last decade (1). However, the pathogenesis of FA has not completely been understood, yet. There is currently no cure or preventive treatment for FA (2). Previous studies showed that children, adolescents and adults with FA and their families had low quality of life (QoL) (3-5). However, the QoL in infants was investigated scarcely and there has been no trial evaluating the psychosocial well-being in breastfeeding mothers having infants with FA (6).
The first year of life is unique to the rest of life. There can be several factors that may impact QoL in mother-infant dyads (7). Many breastfeeding mothers believe that foods transferring through the breast milk from mother to infant can lead to allergy. Due to this perspective, many breastfeeding mothers who think that their infants had FA lean to remove many nutrients from their diets. The diagnosis and suspicion of FA and dietary elimination may cause stress, anxiety in and affect psychosocial well-being of mothers.
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of dietary elimination on maternal psychopathology among mothers, specifically stress/anxiety and mother-to-infant bonding. Our secondary aim was to explore the importance of sociodemographic features on these variables in this critical period of mother-to-infant bonding in order to provide specific psychosocial approaches. The assessment of psychosocial status of mothers in the first years of their children’s life may be important to understand maternal stress and to maintain a new approach and behavior to the mothers who are anxious.