Review : Excessive infantile crying: a review of the literature

■ Excessive infantile crying is a widespread problem which exerts a serious impact on families' lives.

■ The prevalence, cause, and treatment of the problem have been addressed in the literature for many years but with varying degrees of success.

■ Variation in definition of excessive crying leads to difficulty when comparing results between studies.

■ Flawed method and inadequate sampling characterise many studies in this field, often seriously limiting the usefulness of the findings.

■ Progress has been made in some aspects of excessive crying, and other approaches hold promise of success, but wide gaps remain with regard to cause and treatment.