Playground (Photo, Michelle Earle,14/04/2023)
My interest in Infant/Early Childhood, Parent and Family Mental Health began 25 years ago when I undertook Doctoral research into this lifecycle phase. Since then, this interest has guided me to further training which has been supported by membership of relevant national and international professional associations. Perhaps my wisest teacher’s however, have been the many infants/pre-schoolers, parents and families with whom I have worked with over the years.
And no wonder this work has captured my interest for so long.
We know that the period of transition through pregnancy, birth and the first 3 years of life is a foundational time for the future mental health and wellbeing of infants, parents and the family as a whole. At this time an infant is born, but so are parents and the new family unit. As the British Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott wrote in 1960 “there is no such thing as an infant, there is an infant and someone” – describing the incredible shaping force of Attachment Relationships (Bowlby,1962) between infants and caregivers upon infant social-emotional development. Indeed, one current theory within Infant Mental Health is that the Attachment System within the human species may have evolved to foster the growth of our social-emotional brains.
In the decades since the ground breaking writings of Bowlby and Winnicott, there has been an explosion of research in fields relevant to infant and parent mental health, such as neuroscience. Most of this research has affirmed these early theories and elaborated upon them. For example, neuroscience now tells us that there is more growth in the human brain during the first 3 years of life than occurs at any other time in the lifecycle. We also now know that this growth is powerfully shaped by lived experience, most of which occurs within the Attachment Relationship, which can draw out or inhibit much of the potential with which we are born. Given many adult mental health conditions have been found to begin during childhood, when we support infants/pre-schoolers, parents and families during the early years we are truly doing mental health early intervention.
It is important to know that most families navigate the early years with creativity and resilience, growing together over time. When things are not going well however, struggles may emerge in any part of the family unit.
For example, infants/pre-schoolers may have persistent struggles with regulation (sleep, settling, eating), overwhelming feelings (fear, anger) or may struggle to explore their worlds and develop new capacities (struggles with separation, not reaching new milestones).
Parents may struggle with anxiety or depression, self-blame or feelings of inadequacy as parents, social withdrawal, fighting or distance in the couple relationship and difficulties working together as a team.
For the family as a whole, struggles at this time may show in family conflict, separation or breakdown.
However, the growth in our understanding of this lifecycle phase is also guiding better mental health responses to infants/pre-schoolers, parents and families today, which help to maximise their strengths and potential to grow-through their struggles. Recently, a group of leading mental health professionals from Australia and New Zealand (Lim et al, 2022) characterised this as holistic and integrated infant-parent-family mental health care involving professionals skilled in understanding the mental health needs of each part of the whole, trained in individual and relationship-based interventions, and able to work collaboratively across allied agencies to strengthen the care-giving system around the family.
At MindEcology my commitment to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of infants/pre-schoolers, parents and families in the West continues, as does my lifelong learning with the families I see. And that is why this work remains a such a passion…………..
Sources
Bowlby, J. (1969/82). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment 2. New York, Basic Books.
Lim, I., Newman-Morris, V., Hill, R., Hoehn, E., Kowalenko, N., Matacz, R., Paul, C., Powrie, R., Priddis, L., Raykar, V., Wright, T., Newman, L. & Sundram, S. (2022). You can’t have one without the other: the case for integrated perinatal and infant mental health services. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 1-3.
Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationships. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41, 585-595.