The Michigan infant mental health home visiting model

Selma Fraiberg's pioneering work with infants, toddlers, and families over 40 years ago led to the development of a field in which professionals from multiple disciplines learned to work with or on behalf of infants, very young children, their parents, and the relationships that bind them together. The intent was to promote social and emotional health through enhancing the security of early developing parent–child relationships in the first years of life (Fraiberg, 2018). Called infant mental health (IMH), practitioners from fields of health, education, social work, psychology, human development, nursing, pediatrics, and psychiatry specialize in supporting the optimal development of infants and the developing relationship between infants and their caregivers. When a baby is born into optimal circumstances, to parents free of undue economic and psychological stressors and who are emotionally ready to provide care and nurturing for an infant's needs, an IMH approach may be offered as promotion or prevention, with the goal of supporting new parent(s) in developing confidence in their capacity to understand and meet the needs of the tiny human they are coming to know and care for. However, when parental history is fraught with abandonment, loss, abuse or neglect, or the current environment is replete with economic insecurity, threats to survival due to interpersonal or community violence, social isolation, mental illness, or substance abuse, the work of the IMH therapist may require intervention or intensive treatment and becomes more psychotherapeutic in nature. The underlying therapeutic goal is to create a context in which the baby develops within the environment of a parent's nurturing care without the psychological impingement that parental history of trauma or loss or current stressors such as isolation, poverty, or the birth of a child with special needs, can incur.     

Observing home-visit quality with the home visit rating scales: Introduction to the special section

Evidence-based home-visiting programs aim to address one of the most important challenges facing our species—setting the next generation on a healthy path of development that prepares them for a future that is simultaneously uncertain and promising. Diverse research literatures have pointed to practices to effectively meet this challenge and better achieve the unfulfilled promise of home visiting by more effectively engaging parents in supporting their children's early development and well-being. Measures of home-visit quality practices drawn from social work, pediatric nursing, early childhood, and early intervention research literatures have identified building relationships with families and focusing on their strengths as effective, practices that are particularly important for vulnerable families. The articles in this special section used the Home Visit Rating Scales to examine stability in home-visit quality over time, study specific home-visiting processes linked with quality, validate a supervisor checklist of home-visiting implementation, and consider the home visit in relation to an array of indicators reflecting overall home-visiting program strength and stability. These articles exemplify progress in home-visiting research over recent decades, including advances in direct observational methods and measurement as well as examinations of home visiting as an observable process across various home-visiting program models and populations.     

Introduction to the guest edited section: world government

In this introduction, I first present the general problematic of the special section. Our world faces several existential challenges (climate change, threat of (nuclear) war, and global injustice) and some would argue (with even more disagreeing) that the only adequate answer to these challenges is setting up a world government. I then introduce the contributions that comprise the scholarly body of the special section: Andri? on global democracy; Hahn on global political reconciliation; Pinheiro Walla on Kant and world government; Miklós &; Tanyi on institutional consequentialism and world governance. Lastly, I briefly describe the practical context in which the idea of the special section has arisen and in which the present contributions have taken shape.     

Introduction to the special section on health and cognitive function.

Numerous factors related to health and diseases have been studied in relation to cognitive function. It has been shown that across the life span, systemic medical diseases can negatively impact cognitive function. Factors that influence the development of medical diseases, such as poor health habits, biological risk factors, hormones, genetic factors, exposure to environmental toxins, and certain treatments for disease, can also have an adverse effect on cognitive function. Conversely, factors such as high levels of education, good health habits, and some treatments for disease can be protective. Included in this special section are 6 empirical articles that examine the relation of health or disease to cognitive function.     

Introduction to the special section on the future of health psychology.

Following 25 years of landmark progress, health psychology faces even greater change in the foreseeable future. Evolving patterns of health and illness and developments in medicine and related fields will shape the future of health psychology. The articles in this special section discuss these future issues in several areas: the biopsychosocial model, changes in demographics, prevention, clinical health psychology interventions, health care financing, and new technologies. In every case, the future holds a variety of important challenges and opportunities in research, practice, training, and policy.     

Beyond mental health: an evolutionary analysis of development under risky and supportive environmental conditions: an introduction to the special section

Evolutionary approaches to behavior have increasingly captured the attention and imagination of academics and laypeople alike. One part of this trend has been the increasing influence of evolutionary theory in developmental science. The articles in this special section of Developmental Psychology attempt to demonstrate why an evolutionary analysis is needed to more fully understand the contexts and contingencies of development. The 3 theoretical articles articulate the core evolutionary logic underlying conditional adaptation (and maladaptation) to both stressful and supportive environmental conditions over development. These theoretical articles are then followed by 9 empirical articles that test these evolutionary-developmental theories and hypotheses. Finally, 6 commentaries evaluate the prospects, pitfalls, and implications of this body of work.     

The role of the infant mental health therapist in the framework of preventive mental health

The role of the infant mental health therapist is differentiated from that of other infant interventionists as being a secondary prevention treatment approach employing the techniques of long-term, insight-oriented psychotherapy. Such an approach encourages the caregiver to recall his or her own childhood experiences and conflicts to gain an understanding of feelings directed at his or her own baby. The prevention models of Caplan are considered as is the development of the work of Fraiberg and her colleagues.     

The growth and development of an infant mental health program: An integrated perspective

This article details the development of the Infant Mental Health Clinical and Training Program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine from 1976 to the present. The article discusses the clinical sites where the program takes place, which include the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, outpatient child psychiatry clinic, and day treatment programs. Trainees from several mental health disciplines participate in the program, including predoctoral psychology externs, interns from the Clinical Psychology Internship, residents from the Child Psychiatry Training Program, and postdoctoral research fellows in developmental psychopathology. Recently, the Infant Mental Health Program has also been able to offer its own training positions. The philosophical models of clinical service and training are outlined. The article concludes by looking at future directions and challenges for the Infant Mental Health Program. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Introduction to the special section on structural equation modeling

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a frequently used data-analytic technique in psychopathology research. This popularity is due to the unique capabilities and broad applicability of SEM and to recent advances in model and software development. Unfortunately, the popularity and accessibility of SEM is matched by its complexities and ambiguities. Thus, users are often faced with difficult decisions regarding a variety of issues. This special section is designed to increase the effective use of SEM by reviewing recently developed modeling capabilities, identifying common problems in application, and recommending appropriate strategies for analysis and evaluation.     

Perceptions of infant boys' behavior and mental health: Relation to infant attachment

Two studies were conducted to determine the impact of infants' attachment classifications and behaviors on naive adults' impressions of their behavior and mental health. In Study 1, three groups of 44 adults viewed a videotape of episode 8 of the Strange Situation for either an avoidant, a resistant, or a secure male infant. After viewing the videotape, they made judgments about aspects of the infant's mental health. Adults viewed the resistant baby as less socially competent and more negative in affect than the other two babies and the secure baby as the least independent of the three babies. Parents rated babies as more intelligent than did nonparents. In Study 2, 15 parents were matched on race and gender with 15 nonparents. All adults viewed a videotape of the reunions of two secure, two avoidant, and two resistant male infants. Avoidant babies were viewed as more socially competent and independent than secure babies and the C2 baby was viewed as the least intelligent, least independent, least socially competent, and most affectively negative of the infants. Results are interpreted as underscoring the need to educate parents and paraprofessionals about the importance of infant distress and physical contact with parents.     

Introduction to the special section on social neuroscience: promise and caveats

This special issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition is devoted to theory and research at the interface of social psychology and neuroscience. The 5 empirical articles represent the theoretical and methodological breadth of issues considered by social neuroscientists. The methods span brain lesion work to neuroendocrinology to psychophysiological indicators of brain activity to functional magnetic resonance imaging indicators of brain activity. The remaining 2 articles consider explicitly some of the promises and pitfalls of social neuroscience; these authors, although noting the power of neuroscience methods, remind readers of the serious challenges posed in trying to examine the biological processes underlying or associated with social psychological phenomena. These articles help to reveal the richness of social neuroscience and the power of neuroscientific methods to address processes and mechanisms that would not be possible with traditional social psychology methods.     

The father's role in the facilitation of infant mental health

Many recent studies have focused on the nature and significance of father-infant relationships. These studies show that men are as capable of behaving sensitively as women are, although cultural sex-stereotypes usually prevent them from assuming a prominent role in child care. Nevertheless, most infants become attached to both their parents during the first year of life although they tend to establish primary relationships with their primary caretakers. During the second year of life, fathers encourage boys to focus attention on their fathers. This may facilitate the development of gender identity. In addition, the security of the father-infant attachment relationship may affect the infant's orientation to novel social situations. Fathers also affect infants indirectly via their influence on the children's mothers.     

Introduction to the special section on the structure of emotion.

This section is devoted to articles about the structure of affect, the patterned interrelations of moods and emotions. Structural features of affect, such as a bipolar pleasantness-unpleasantness dimension, a circumplex ordering, prototypical discrete emotions, and separable positive and negative emotion clusters, are discussed. It is proposed that positive and negative affect systems create the conditions for the co-occurrence of discrete positive emotions with each other and of discrete negative emotions with each other. The experience of affect tends to be felt along a bipolar pleasantness-unpleasantness dimension because pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions tend not to be experienced together at intense levels. To move beyond current knowledge, future research in the area must more often use non-self-report measures, more sophisticated statistical and measurement methods, dynamic as well as static data, systematically varied response formats, and experimental manipulations.