Mental health articles

Interventions for high–risk infants and parents
Once a family has been identified as having high risks, very often there are many
services asked to be involved, including mental health consultants. Lieberman
(1998) suggests there are three goals for the infant mental health consultant:
• to identify the developmental, psychological and relationship-based factors affecting the child and family’s functioning
• to make short- and long-term plans for the infant in the context of these
factors
• to ensure that the plans are implemented by the services involved, in
particular, the child-protection and legal services.
With overburdened or multiproblem families, Larrieu and Zeanah (2004)
advocate interventions that are comprehensive and operate on several levels. It may be necessary to integrate and coordinate various systems and services—
legal, child protection and health—while adopting a relationship focus
characteristic of infant mental health (Zeanah & Zeanah, 2001).
Home visiting is an integral part of early intervention work and
acknowledges the practical difficulties these families may have in organising
themselves and their resources, as well as their motivation to attend office-based appointments.
There is often insufficient agreement between the workers as to ‘the best interests of the child’. Difficult choices have to be made and often it is ‘the least
detrimental’ alternative that is searched for: how to minimise damaging
psychological distress for the child and maximise optimal development.

Tags: infant