Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health

Overview

What is Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health?

It is the developing capacity of the infant and young child to:

• form close and secure relationships;
• to experience, manage, and express a full range of emotions;
• and explore the environment and learn—all in the context of family, community, and culture.

The prenatal period through the first five years of a child’s life is a crucial period for brain development and acquiring the social and emotional skills necessary to succeed in school and life. Safe, consistent, and caring relationships and environments can support healthy development; and other factors like traumatic experiences, can lead to serious mental health problems. Young children can and do experience mental health problems. It is estimated that between 9.5 and 14.2% of children from birth to 5 years old experience an emotional or behavioral disorder (National Council on the Developing Child, 2010).

What Does Supporting Infants and Young Children Look Like?

Working with young children is relational in nature. As Winnicott said, “There is no such thing as a baby, only a baby and someone else…a baby cannot exist alone, only as part of a relationship.” To work with families and young children, we need to be able to focus on relationships and understand the child’s world and context, have a good understanding of child development, stay curious about the family’s culture and how it may influence behaviors, beliefs, and parenting practices, and finally, also, practice self-reflection, exploring how our own feelings, experiences and cultures may be impacting how we see, think about, and show up to support families. Access to reflective supervision or reflective consultation is an important practice in this work for the entire workforce, not just clinicians.

Am I an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Professional?

If your work impacts expecting families or families with young children, you are part of this workforce! Families with young children come in contact with different services and providers and any of those point of contact can be a supportive interaction that impacts that family’s life and a child’s development. Of course, we all play different roles in what kind of supports we can provide, but we all have in common the ability to center relationships on promoting child development, and supporting early relational health.