Infant Mental Health Journal最新文献

This study explores readiness for change (RFC) in infant and early childhood education through the perspectives of infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) consultants and social-emotional (SEL) coaches. Specifically, this research examines how these professionals perceive educators’ RFC, identify barriers and facilitators to engagement, and implement strategies to tailor intervention efforts based on educators’ individual levels of readiness. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 IECMH consultants and SEL coaches in the southeastern United States, with demographic data indicating a predominantly female sample, diverse in racial backgrounds and professional experience. Thematic analysis identified key themes, including the importance of individualized approaches, supportive relationships, and the influence of both structural and internal barriers on educators’ RFC. Findings underscore the need for validated measures of RFC and suggest that enhancing RFC may strengthen the impact of IECMHC and practice-based coaching interventions. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in fostering RFC and offer practical implications for practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.

Parenting research underscores caregivers’ fundamental role in offering children learning experiences and socializing them into specific sociocultural environments. Diverse parenting programs and initiatives to support caregiving have emerged and have helped many families; however, they still fall short in rooting their content in grounded knowledge of the material, social, and cultural context in which childrearing is occurring. This research sought to contribute to the Chilean literature on the notion of contextualized caregiving. Using an ethnographic approach, we examined the caregiving practices of seven low-income women mothers with their toddler children, from three Latin American countries (Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia) all living in an intercultural city. Data was analyzed using James Spradley's method. The different emphases between these women's childrearing practices and their meanings became central in the analytic process and two themes emerged: (a) immigrant women focused on protection from danger and teaching the social norms they valued, including respect and limits, and (b) local Chilean women emphasized caregivers’ physical presence in their child's life; however, a tension was present around the need to “develop as a person” beyond mothering. The different, locally situated understandings and meanings that guide childrearing and the possible empirical implications of this difference are discussed.

Fathers and/or non-birthing partners are now actively involved in child-rearing globally; however some experience emotional difficulties during the perinatal period. With the birth of a preterm infant, parents experience additional stress beyond that normally engendered by having a baby, which can impact on parent-infant relationship and infant development. In Australia, there is limited evidence on fathers’ experiences of preterm birth. Thus, this study aimed to explore the experiences of Australian fathers of preterm infants including their emotional and physical wellbeing when they have a preterm infant. Narrative inquiry guided the study; 13 fathers whose preterm infant was admitted to Australian neonatal units participated in in-depth interviews lasting 22–72 min. Data analysis generated four themes: (i) emotional response, (ii) fathers’ wellbeing, (iii) fathering in neonatal unit and during transition home (iv) fathers’ needs in the neonatal unit. The findings revealed that fathers felt emotionally overwhelmed, had specific needs but their role in the neonatal unit was not well defined and they felt mothers were given more attention. Despite feeling excluded, many continued to support their partner and infant. Health professionals must be aware of their unconscious biases toward gender roles in the neonatal unit and utilize strategies to actively include fathers and non-birthing partners.

This study explored the demographic and psychosocial characteristics, and presenting concerns of new or expectant fathers seeking perinatal mental health (PMH) support through the Australia-based ForWhen service, compared to a sample of mothers. The retrospective observational analysis examined routinely collected data from 105 male and 203 female clients who were supported by ForWhen between February 2022 to June 2024. Fathers and mothers did not differ in terms of demographic characteristics, and both presented with similarly high levels of distress during intake. However, fathers were more likely to report current self-harm and/or suicidal ideation, as well as current relationship issues and financial stress. Conversely, mothers were more likely to report parenting concerns such as infant sleep and settling challenges. Overall, far fewer men than women access support through ForWhen, despite the known prevalence of PMH concerns among fathers. There were also differences in how clients accessed the service, with fathers more often referred by their intimate partner, suggesting that partners may be an important avenue to encourage help-seeking for paternal PMH concerns. These findings highlight the need to adapt PMH services—traditionally designed for women—to be more inclusive of and better engage men.

Perinatal parenting interventions may be important for enhancing parenting quality, but previous research has mostly focused on parental sensitivity. Other important outcomes, such as parental self-efficacy (PSE), have rarely been studied. Research is also contradictory on whether parenting interventions can also enhance maternal mental health and how treatment-related moderators affect treatment outcome. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of three individually tailored perinatal parenting interventions (therapeutic parent-infant work, maternity and child health clinic psychologists, and practical help) for parenting and mental health in naturalistic community settings in Finnish primary care. We further examined whether mental health symptoms moderated parenting efficacy and how treatment-related factors moderated parenting and mental health outcomes. The sample comprised 263 Finnish-speaking mothers: 177 in different interventions and 86 non-clinical controls from the same area. Parenting was examined with Maternal Self-Efficacy Scale and Emotional Availability (EA) self-report, depression with Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and anxiety with Overall Anxiety Severity and Impairment Scale at the beginning of treatment, post-treatment, and at the six-month follow-up. Therapeutic work was the most broadly effective, with long-term effects on both parenting and mental health outcomes, regardless of maternal symptom level. Spouse participation, postnatal onset, and higher treatment dosage increased intervention effectiveness.

Research has documented elevated experiences of racial discrimination among African American families, and its adverse impacts on their psychological well-being. However, most studies have investigated the experiences of and consequences for older children and adults. The goal of the current study was to examine the relations among mothers’ perception of discrimination during pregnancy, pre- and post-natal depressive symptoms, and infant development in African American families from low-income backgrounds. Using a longitudinal design with questionnaires and direct assessments, this study included 118 African American mothers (and infants) who participated in three data collection sessions: the third trimester of pregnancy (home); 4 weeks postpartum (phone); and when infants were 4–6 months old (home). Analyses revealed that mothers’ perceived prenatal discrimination was strongly associated with depressive symptomatology and that maternal depression was related to infant cognitive and fine motor skills. Perceived prenatal discrimination was significantly related to infant cognitive development. For mothers with higher levels of perceived discrimination, a higher level of depressive symptomatology was related to receptive language. These findings are considered in the context of the extant literature on perinatal stress, maternal functioning, and young infant outcomes. Implications for early childhood and infant mental health practice are discussed.

The use of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) has grown dramatically over the past decade to support the skills and reflective capacity of adults who care for infants and young children birth to kindergarten entry. Research to date has shown promise for IECMHC to support children's social and emotional development. However, there is a gap in the published research that articulates how fidelity to a specific statewide IECMHC model impacts desired outcomes for adult caregivers or the infants and children they serve. This article, which articulates the process that Colorado used to develop its own IECMHC model, is the first step in filling this gap in the research. The step-by-step approach to model development can be used by other states undertaking similar efforts to create models that are geared toward a variety of settings, such as early education, home visitation, or health care. Colorado is beginning statewide implementation of the model that resulted from this process and will soon start evaluating the fidelity of that implementation. This process creates the groundwork for ultimately tying implementation of an articulated IECMHC model to outcomes for adults and the infants and children they care for.

Parental reflective functioning (PRF) is important in guiding parenting behavior. It is traditionally measured with interviews that are relatively time-consuming. A self-report measure of PRF, the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), has been developed but has not yet been extensively validated across different sociocultural contexts. The aim of this study was to examine the factorial structure of the PRFQ in a community-based first-time parent sample in Finland. We further examined the associations between PRFQ scales and parental demographic features, depression, emotional availability (EA) in parent-child relationships, and representations of the child. The sample comprised 355 mothers and 108 fathers and was part of a larger longitudinal study. Data were collected by an online questionnaire at the child age of 2 years. PRF was measured with PRFQ, parental depression with Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression, parent-child interaction quality with Emotional Availability Self-Report, and parental representations of the child with a modified adjective list developed in conjunction with the Interview of Maternal/Paternal Representations. Our results showed that the factor structure of PRFQ was similar to the original sample, and parental demographics, depression, and parenting variables were associated with the PRF scales in an expected manner, supporting the validity of PRFQ across different cultures.

Professionals in the Infant/Early Child Mental Health (IECMH) field are at an increased risk of experiencing burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma symptoms due to the nature of their work that is further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Engagement in self-care may be a helpful strategy for IECMH professionals to curb these psychological effects. Previous operationalizations of self-care have singularly emphasized the behavior aspect despite a growing body of research showing the importance of self-care beliefs. A novel Self-Care Belief and Behavior Questionnaire was tested in a sample of 121 IECMH female identifying professionals located in the United States (between the ages of 18 and 69 with 81.2% identified as White, 12.3% as Black or African American, 2.5% as Latino/a or Latin American, 1.6% as multi-ethnic, .8% as Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.6% preferred not to answer) to strengthen psychometric validity and understand how self-care relates to professional quality of life, internalizing symptoms, and emotion regulation in the IECMH Workforce.

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children's mental health and their engagement in mental health services in the midwestern United States. Previous research investigating the impact of COVID-19 on young children's mental health service utilization has rarely included children under 5 years. Therefore, this study examined how the COVID-19 pandemic and the caregiver-child relationship impacted children's mental health symptoms. It also investigated the impact of COVID-19 and the child's symptom presentation on caregivers’ engagement and attendance in mental health treatment. Data were collected with children 0 to 5 years old (n = 486) from January 2017 to April 2022 using archival records from a community mental health organization. Participants were primarily low-income (81.9%) and White (81.3%). Results found that the caregiver-child relationship impacted children's mental health symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both caregivers and children were rated as more engaged after the pandemic began if the child experienced externalizing symptoms. Children attended fewer therapy sessions after the pandemic started, and those with externalizing symptoms received more overall services than those without.