Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health, Southgate, Michigan.
School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Infant Ment Health J. 2020 Mar;41(2):166-177. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21838. Epub 2020 Apr 3.
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.
塞尔玛·弗雷伯格（Selma Fraiberg）早在 40 多年前就对婴儿、学步儿童和家庭进行了开创性的研究，这导致了一个领域的发展，该领域的专业人员来自多个学科，他们学会了与婴儿、非常年幼的儿童、他们的父母以及将他们联系在一起的关系一起工作或代表他们工作。其目的是通过增强生命头几年中早期发展的亲子关系的安全性来促进社会和情感健康（Fraiberg，2018）。这种方法被称为婴儿心理健康（infant mental health，IMH），来自健康、教育、社会工作、心理学、人类发展、护理、儿科学和精神病学领域的从业者专门从事支持婴儿的最佳发展和婴儿及其照顾者之间发展关系的工作。当婴儿在最佳环境中出生，父母没有过多的经济和心理压力源，并且在情感上准备好满足婴儿需求的照顾和养育时，可能会提供 IMH 方法作为促进或预防措施，目的是支持新父母（父母）在发展对自己能力的信心，以了解和满足他们所了解和关心的小生命的需求。然而，当父母的历史充满了遗弃、丧失、虐待或忽视，或者当前的环境充满了经济不安全、由于人际或社区暴力、社会隔离、精神疾病或药物滥用而导致生存受到威胁时，IMH 治疗师的工作可能需要干预或强化治疗，并且性质更具心理治疗性。潜在的治疗目标是创造一种环境，使婴儿在父母养育的环境中发展，而不会受到父母创伤或丧失历史或当前压力源（如隔离、贫困或有特殊需要的孩子的出生）的心理影响。
