Pregnancy and the time after birth are considered by most to be a time of joyous
transition and change for a woman and her partner. However, it also represents a time of
significant increases in the risk of mental health issues, most notably anxiety and depression
(Austin et al., 2017). The presence of anxiety and depression have ramifications, not only for
the mother, but also impact on her ability to bond with her baby, an important precursor to
adaptive functioning across the lifespan (Englund et al., 2011). This thesis investigates wellknown
variables that have been independently identified as predictive of psychological distress
outside of the perinatal period (Pepping et al., 2013; Pepping et al., 2014), and, to a lesser
extent, in perinatal populations, namely dispositional mindful awareness, adult attachment
style, and emotion regulation. Chapter 1 reviews the literature relating to perinatal mental
health, specifically anxiety and depression, and the deleterious role of psychological distress
on mother-infant bonding from an attachment theory perspective. Chapter 2 details the
measures utilized in the empirical studies of this thesis. Chapter 3 provides a "proof of concept"
and examines the relationship between mindful awareness, attachment style, and emotion
regulation in psychological distress in a sample of undergraduate university students. It
identifies attachment anxiety and emotion dysregulation as mediators of the relationship
between mindful awareness and psychological distress. Chapter 4 utilizes a cross-sectional
design to investigate the relationship between mindful awareness, attachment style, and
emotion regulation with prenatal depression, anxiety, and pregnancy-specific anxiety. The
findings suggest that attachment anxiety, emotion regulation and mindful awareness play
important roles in prenatal depression and anxiety, and to a lesser extent pregnancy-specific
anxiety, indicating that other factors may be more important in the development of pregnancyspecific
anxiety. Chapter 5 more closely examines the relationship between mindful awareness
and emotion regulation in a prospective perinatal sample, identifying a likely bidirectional
