Evaluating infants and toddlers for treatment

✍ Scribed by Robert J. Harmon; Joy D. Osofsky

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 45 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0163-9641
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0355(199722)18:2<123::aid-imhj1>3.0.co;2-q

✦ Synopsis

In 1945 and 1946, Rene Spitz described two psychiatric syndromes of infancy: Hospitalism and Anaclitic Depression, suggested their etiology, and offered treatment recommendations. He was probably the first to use the term infant psychiatry. Fifty years later, the field of infant mental health has expanded greatly, but the issues of what kind of nosology, evaluation approach, and treatment plan is appropriate for infants, toddlers, and their families continues. This special issue of the Infant Mental Health Journal is devoted to describing how different infant mental health programs in the United States, Canada, and Europe approach these difficult issues.

Progress in developing a nosology has resulted from the recently published Diagnostic Classification Manual (DC: 0 -3) by the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. Some of the programs described in this issue have used that diagnostic scheme and elaborated on the benefits and problems. The overall understanding which emerges from the papers in this issue is that there do not seem to be any "standards" of evaluation and treatment, but rather a number of shared principles and practices which are central to most clinical infant mental health evaluation and treatment programs. We hope that the readers of this special issue will find both the communalities and the uniqueness of the program descriptions useful in their own clinical work with infants and their families and the development of other systematic clinical intervention programs. *