Connecticut report recommends training in infant mental health
A new report in Connecticut calls for a state-wide system to ensure a range of professionals who work with infants and their families receive training in infant mental health.
The report, “The Infant Mental Health Workforce: Key to Promoting the Healthy Social and Emotional Development of Children,” released by the Child Health and Development Institute (CHDI) of Connecticut, recommends infant mental health training to the infant and toddler mental health workforce including not just mental health clinicians, but also early care and education providers, home visitors, health providers, early interventionists and related service therapists (such as speech and occupational therapists).
There is a tremendous opportunity to improve children’s lives by promoting a child’s secure attachment with a caregiver from the beginning, according to Judith Meyers, Ph.D., psychologist and president and CEO of CHDI, and one of the report’s authors.
“We’ve known for many years that those earliest attachments to a caring, nurturing adult is the most fundamental process for forming healthy social-emotional development in life,” Meyers said. “That’s not new to us, but what is new is a better understanding of the brain development that goes with that – being able to see the physical manifestations of what happens when children are subjected to neglect or abuse or adverse childhood events that result in consequences that stay with a child for the rest of their lives.”
The report outlines the “serve and return” – one of the ways the caregiver-child relationship shapes brain development. When an infant “serves” interactions through such expressions as babbling, facial expressions or crying, and the adult caregiver’s “return” response is responsive and nurturing, the infant experiences optimal brain development that becomes the foundation for later learning. A deficient “serve and return” pattern can lead to deficits in brain development and the ability to cope with stress.
“It’s really all in that interaction between a caring adult and the baby,” Meyers said. “If the baby doesn’t have that, they don’t learn their skills.”
Professionals who care for young children are in a unique position to help families develop nurturing relationships, Meyers said.
“Everybody who interacts with a very young child has the opportunity to help promote healthy social and emotional development, to recognize early signs of difficulty, to understand what is going on in the family in terms of parent stress – which is a major contributor – and to be able to refer parents and children to the proper resources when they see the signs,” Meyers said.
Early childhood professionals and home visitors are often in an infant’s life from the very beginning, sometimes on a daily basis. “So they are positioned to see if there are difficulties, as well as support parents in providing more effective parenting,” Meyers said.
In addition to requiring infant mental health training for professionals who work with young children, report recommendations include integrating such training into higher education and professional development courses; ensuring public sector programs that serve vulnerable young children and families have access to appropriately trained specialists; and increasing support and training for reflective supervision/consultation in the infant-family field.
The report also recommends strengthening of the Connecticut Association for Infant Mental Health’s (CT-AIMH) participation in the emerging national Alliance for Advancing Infant Mental Health, of which Connecticut is being recognized as a founding partner. The CT-AIMH adapted a system of infant mental health training and credentialing from Michigan AIMH, and already, 53 Connecticut professionals have earned or are in the process of earning the CT-AIHM endorsement.
Meyers hopes training in infant mental health and also infant mental health specialists will be embedded in systems and programs state-wide.