infant mental health
[This abstract set into this paper by the archivist on 2/2014 – it was saved by CU on 14/9/08 20:37 and saved in a separate file to the body of this piece below]
There are historical, social and cultural variations in how emotional and mental health are thought about and believed to develop and the place of children in society. Historical and cross-cultural comparisons can sharpen thinking about strengths and lacunae of child... more
One challenge for Infant mental health research is to bring the clinician’s sensitivity together with the rigour that we have come to associate with Attachment Theory. To what extent, for example, can research instruments generate findings directly applicable to working with vulnerable parents and babies? One difficulty is that research and clinical work, such as attachment research and psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy, use... more
Becoming a mother can create profound changes for a woman’s sense of who she is. This paper presents findings from a study on mothering identity involving 20 first-time mothers from a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds interviewed about their experiences before the baby’s birth and during and at the end of the first year. 6 mothers and infants were also observed weekly at home for one year using the psychoanalytic infant observation... more
This paper illustrates a relationship between the containment of anxiety and the capacity to work through and recover from traumatic events as it emerged in the once weekly psychotherapy of an 8-year-old boy, born three months prematurely. At referral his presentation strongly suggested the impact of his parents' separation and subsequent divorce three years previously, and the implications of being unable to express, compre hend... more
Becoming a mother for the first time can profoundly affect a woman's sense of who she is. To manage this transition while dealing with the vulnerability of a tiny baby requires support from partner, family and wider community. What happens for mothers rearing their babies in very different countries or environments from those in which they were themselves brought up?
This paper presents findings from a research project... more
Significant losses and separations can be either an impediment or a spur to development, depending on internal and external circu mstances. This symposium explores varying outcomes from points of view of infants and parents, citing material from a) two research studies using psychoanalytic infant observation, b) clinical research using video to track processes of change in psychotherapy with parents and u nder fives, and c) parent-infant... more
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