The Value of Touch

1. Recognize why touch and touch therapies are so important for people of all ages
2. Identify why touch is essential for normal development and describe how it can be given to improve development during pregnancy, labor, delivery, infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood
3. Identify the most important functions of the integumentary system and describe how touch is useful for pain relief
4. Reference the textbook and identify the way at least three (3) touch therapies work to benefit people
5. Identify specific benefits for a variety of infants, including those with special needs
6. Identify specific benefits of touch for children, adolescents and adults, including those with special
   needs

"We also learned that we could predict postpartum depression by asking, "Do you and your partner want this baby?"  From our own research, we now know that postpartum depression, affecting as much as 80 percent of women, has terrible effects on newborns.  Babies born to depressed mothers show inferior performance on the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assessment, an examination that assesses the newborn's response to visual, auditory, social, and nonsocial stimulation, and the newborn's motor behavior, self-quieting, and reflexes.  These newborns are also less attentive and less responsive to faces, and their perception of auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli is less developed.  In addition, their EEG activity is similar to that of their adult mothers.  The differences at this early stage probably derive from these babies having been exposed to their mother's high levels of stress hormones during pregnancy, because at birth the newborns have the same high stress-hormone levels as their mothers.  After their birth, the depressed mothers touched their newborns less often than the nondepressed mothers.  When a mother's depression continues, the infant's growth and development are delayed.  If the mother is still depressed six months after the delivery, the infant typically weighs less than the norm, and at one year has lower Bayley mental and motor scale scores."  (Touch by Tiffany Field, 2001, p. 42-43)

Postpartum depression:

1. affects fifty percent of women
2. does not affect the baby
3. creates lower stimulation development and response in the baby
4. creates higher stimulation development and response in the baby