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'Not Just Touchy-Feely Psychobabble': Even Infants Need Mental Health Care [medicalxpress.com]

 

By Peter Nickeas, MedicalXpress, September 23, 2019

In and around Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, long-standing causes of friction like gun violence and poverty have for some families combined with newer fears of immigration crackdowns and deportation of loved ones—and mental health professionals hope to address toxic stress that can have long-term effects on the lives of very young children.

Aiming to rectify the shortage of mental health care available to infants and children younger than 5 in Little Village and Lawndale, the Erikson Institute, an early childhood graduate school, has opened a new clinic there, its first free-standing health center outside its River North home base.

An opening reception was held recently, though the clinic has been operating since May, and social workers had started doing visits in the area for 18 months leading up to that.

[Please click here to read more.]

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“Persistence of the destructive myth that ‘children are resilient’ will prevent millions of children, and our society, from meeting their true potential” 

-Dr. Bruce Perry

Laura Haynes Collector posted:

Infants need LOVING CARE. 

Those who don't get loving care will often need need mental health care. 

Yes, there are a few genetic mental illnesses, but the explosion we now see in MI is largely due to the fact that the primal attachment needs of our infants and toddlers are not being met.

1.  CARRYING (See James W Prescott, NIH) - movement,  body contact -- both critical to optimal brain growth.

2.  LOVE  Swift empathic responses, soothing, cuddling, feeding, being talked to and paid attention to by their mother (or mother-substitute who does not change).

Yes..... 

I cannot agree more! 

Infants need LOVING CARE. 

Those who don't get loving care will often need need mental health care. 

Yes, there are a few genetic mental illnesses, but the explosion we now see in MI is largely due to the fact that the primal attachment needs of our infants and toddlers are not being met.

1.  CARRYING (See James W Prescott, NIH) - movement,  body contact -- both critical to optimal brain growth.

2.  LOVE  Swift empathic responses, soothing, cuddling, feeding, being talked to and paid attention to by their mother (or mother-substitute who does not change).

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