Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice is a groundbreaking book that provides an overview of the field from both theoretical and clinical viewpoints. The editors and chapter authors some of the field's foremost researchers and teachers describe from their diverse perspectives key concepts fundamental to infant-parent and early childhood mental health work. The complexity of this emerging field demands an interdisciplinary approach, and the book provides a clear, comprehensive, and coherent text with an abundance of clinical applications to increase understanding and help the reader to integrate the concepts into clinical practice.
Offering both cutting-edge coverage and a format that facilitates learning, the book boasts the following features and content:


A focus on helping working professionals expand their specialization skills and knowledge and on offering core competency training for those entering the field, which reflects the Infant-Parent Mental Health Postgraduate Certificate Program (IPMHPCP) and Fellowship in Napa, CA that was the genesis of the book.

Chapters written by a diverse group of authors with vastly different training, expertise, and clinical experience, underscoring the book's interdisciplinary approach. In addition, terms such as clinician, therapist, provider, professional, and teacher are intentionally used interchangeably to describe and unify the field.

Explication and analysis of a variety of therapeutic models, including Perry's Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics; Brazelton's neurodevelopmental and relational Touchpoints; attachment theory; the Neurorelational Framework; Mindsight; and Downing's Video Intervention Therapy.

An entire chapter devoted to diagnostic schemas for children ages 0?5, which highlights the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood: Revised (DC:0-3R). With the release of DSM-5, this chapter provides a prototypical crosswalk between DC:0-3R and ICD codes.

A discussion of the difference between evidence-based treatments and evidence-based practices in the field, along with valuable information on randomized controlled trials, a research standard that, while often not feasible or ethically permissible in infant mental health work, remains a standard applied to the field.

Key points and references at the end of each chapter, and generous use of figures, tables, and other resources to enhance learning.
The volume editors and authors are passionate about the pressing need for further research and the acquisition and application of new knowledge to support the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice should find a receptive audience for this critically important message

Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. Core concepts in infant-family and early childhood mental health. The neurosequential model of therapeutics: application of a developmentally sensitive and neurobiology-informed approach to clinical problem solving in maltreated children. Typical and atypical development: peek-a-boo and blind selection. Brazelton's neurodevelopmental and relational touchpoints and infant mental health. The neurorelational framework in infant and early childhood mental health. Attachment theory: implications for young children and their parents. Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory: play therapy for young children. Interpersonal neurobiology, mindsight, and integration: the mind, relationships, and the brain. Basics of counseling in infant-parent and early childhood mental health. Behavioral epigenetics and the developmental origins of child mental health disorders. DC:0-3R: a diagnostic schema for infants and young children and their families. Fussy babies: early challenges in regulation, impact on the dyad and family, and longer-term implications. Developmental and dyadic implications of challenges with sensory processing, physical functioning, and sensory-based self-regulation. Autism spectrum disorders: the importance of parent-child relationships. Touch in parent-infant mental health: arousal, regulation, and relationships. Developmental psychopathology: core principles and Implications for child mental health. Video intervention therapy for parents with psychiatric disturbance. Evidence-based treatments and evidence-based practices in the infant-parent mental health field. Transforming clinical practice through reflection work. Attachment, intersubjectivity, and mentalization within the experience of the child, the parent, and the provider. Index.
"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 Hospital"For 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 Center
"There 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

Marie E. Anzalone, Sc.D., O.T.R./L., F.A.O.T.A.
T. Berry Brazelton, M.D.
Kristie Brandt, C.N.M., M.S.N., D.N.P.
Cailey Bromer, B.S.
James Diel, M.Ed., M.F.T.
George Downing, Ph.D.
Joshua Feder, M.D.
Tiffany Field, Ph.D.
Carol George, Ph.D.
Linda Gilkerson, Ph.D.
Larry Gray, M.D.
Alexandra Murray Harrison, M.D.
Stephen P. Hinshaw, Ph.D.
John Hornstein, Ed.D.
Wolfgang Jordan, M.B.A., M.I.M.
Cassandra L. Joubert, Sc.D.
Barry M. Lester, Ph.D.
Connie Lillas, Ph.D., M.F.T., R.N.
Mark Ludwig M.S.W., L.C.S.W.
Carmen J. Marsit, Ph.D.
Barbara McCarroll, Ph.D.
Michael M. Morgan, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.
Benjamin W. Nelson, B.A.
Cherise Northcutt, Ph.D.
Suzanne C. Parker, B.A.
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
Corinna Reck, Ph.D.
Margaret Ritchey, M.A., R.P.T., D.P.T.
Ruby Moye? Salazar, L.C.S.W., B.C.D.
Stephen Seligman, D.M.H.
Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.
Mary Beth Steinfeld, M.D.
Barbara Stroud, Ph.D.
Ed Tronick, Ph.D.
Regina von Einsiedel, M.D.
Susanne Wortmann-Fleischer, M.D.
Kristie Brandt, C.N.M., D.N.P., is Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the UC Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, California; Director of the University of Massachusetts Infant-Parent Mental Health Postgraduate Certificate Program and Fellowship in Napa, California; Brazelton Touchpoints Center Visiting Faculty, Boston, Massachusetts; and a ChildTrauma Academy Fellow, Houston, Texas.Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., is Senior Fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston, Texas; Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois; and, inaugural Senior Fellow, Berry Street Childhood Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, AU.
Stephen Seligman, D.M.H., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Infant-Parent Program at the University of California, San Francisco; Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues: International Journal of Relational Perspectives; and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco, California.
Ed Tronick, Ph.D., is the University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Research Associate in the Department of Newborn Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; and Lecturer, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Foreword by
T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School; and Founder and Faculty of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center in the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.