Human development concepts and applications

Spitz Hospitalism

Hospitalism is essentially the condition of infants becoming attached more to the routine of the hospital and its caregiving medical staff rather than to their mothers. As we now know, children subjected to this kind of a condition (intentionally or even through abuse or neglect) fare much worse than normal children who are tended to by their mothers. In Attachment Theory -- Why NOT to Baby Train (Steph, nd), the works of Spitz and others were recounted, showing how severely improper behaviors can hurt real babies. Spitz's documented how 91 babies in the Foundling Home were first given a taste of love and affection from their mothers. They were then effectively taken away from their mothers and put under the direction of nurses, whose focus was on meeting their medical needs alone. As we now might expect, the children soon deteriorated significantly, showing severe impediments to normal growth and development. Spitz would call this anaclitic depression, which is now recognized as a specific attachment disorder. As Lubit (2009) summarized the findings, "The long-standing absence of emotional warmth took an enormous toll on the children, primarily on their emotional development but also on their physical growth and development condition. Spitz concluded that providing only for a baby's physical needs is not sufficient for normal development." Even competent hospital care given by well-intended nurses was not enough. With only "one-tenth of the normal affective supplies" the infants could not thrive (Steph, pg. 2).

Once the separation occurred, very specific development deficiencies were noticed. According to the Attachment Theory article, Spitz noted that motor development nearly stopped. The infants became passive. They stopped crying and lay on their backs without rolling over or exhibiting other gross motor milestones (American Pregnancy, 2011). Spitz apparently directly recorded that the children's faces were vacuous, eye coordination was often defective, making them look imbecile (Steph, pg. 2). Their body movements were more like spasms ("spasmus mutans") and their fingers demonstrated decerebrate or athetotic movements, indicating brain or other medical conditions arising from improper growth. One of the reasons that developmental milestones for infants and young children are so important is so that mothers (and fathers) can judge their baby's progression to ensure sufficient loving interaction. These standards also help parents ensure that babies are engaged with their surroundings so that they experience hand, eye and other types of coordination and basically begin their physical, emotional and mental learning processes (American Pregnancy, 2011).