Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice
This ambitious volume brings together some of the most outspoken theorists, researchers and practitioners building the field of infant mental health from overlapping frameworks, models and disciplines. It reveals the challenges and excitement of this time, as this field sorts through the psychoanalytic and attachment theories of its origins, integrates emerging neuroscience and epigenetic theories whose applications to practice are still being worked out, to stake out its territory, tests its boundaries, and develops its own identity. More than that, this collection suggests a truly transdisciplinary path for a whole new kind of field, born from a range of others, that is creating new meanings and possibilities at their intersections for babies, families, clinicians, systems of care, researchers and policy-makers. --Joshua Sparrow, M.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's HospitalFor those of us who work daily with parents who never smile at their baby and have no idea how to play, this book explains the reasons for their parenting deficits, the effects of those deficits on the baby, and the interventions that we need to implement to help them become good enough parents. The giants in the field of infant mental health have created this comprehensive volume that so vividly brings the research to life in a way that practitioners can understand and appreciate. I know I will make better decisions for the families in my courtroom as a result of reading this book. --Cindy S. Lederman, J.D., Circuit Court Judge, Eleventh Judicial Circuit Juvenile Justice CenterThere has been an urgent need for a practically oriented book that integrates the modern understanding of mind with a hands-on guide to early childhood interventions. This is the book to bring about this integration. It is simply the best book that provides a pragmatic approach to support frontline clinicians at the same time as conveying the complexity of ideas that must guide such interventions. It is a beautifully written, comprehensive, user-friendly guide that will run into many reprints and editions. --Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., FBA, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London; Chief Executive, The Anna Freud Centre