Abstract
This chapter provides a foundation for appreciating how the assessment of very young children with mental health problems is different from that of older children or adults. It includes an introduction to the field of infant and early childhood mental health, explicates the principles of working in early childhood mental health, and discusses rewards and challenges of assessing very young children. In addition, concrete recommendations are provided to help clinicians begin their work in infant and early childhood mental health.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
AAP Policy Statement. (2006). Identifying infants and young children with developmental disorders in the medical home: An algorithm for developmental surveillance and screening. Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics.
Bowlby, J. (1953). Childcare and the growth of love. London: Penguin Books.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment. New York, NY: Basic Books.
De Villiers, J., & Davidson, T. (2016). Language development. In D. S. Blanchfield (Ed.), The Gale encyclopedia of children’s health: Infancy through adolescence, Vol. 3 (3rd ed., pp. 1576–1583). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.
Fitzgerald, H. E., Weatherston, D., & Mann, T. L. (2011). Infant mental health: An interdisciplinary framework for early social and emotional development. Current Problems in Pediatric Adolescent Health Care, 41, 178–182.
Fraiberg, S. (1980). Ghosts in the nursery: A psychoanalytic approach to the problems of impaired infant-mother relationships. In S. Fraiberg (Ed.), Clinical studies in infant mental health. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Freud, A. (1983). CBE (1895–1982). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24, 333–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1983.tb00114.x
Holmes, J. (2014). John Bowlby and attachment theory. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hughes, D. (2003). Correlates of African American and Latino Parents’ messages to children about ethnicity and race: a comparative study of racial socialization. American Journal of Community Psychology, 31(1/2), 15–33.
Institute of Medicine. (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9824
Knudsen, E. I. (2004). Sensitive periods in the development of the brain and behavior. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1412–1425.
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2010). Early experiences can alter gene expression and affect long-term development: Working paper no. 10. Retrieved March 7, 2015, from www.developingchild.harvard.edu
Rathus, S. A. (2008). Childhood and adolescence: Voyages in development. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The culture and nature of human development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sameroff, A. J., & Fiese, B. H. (2000). Models of development and developmental risk. In C. H. Zeanah (Ed.), The handbook of infant mental health. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Shonkoff, J. P. (2017). Breakthrough impacts: What science tells us about supporting early childhood development. Young Children, 72(2), 8–16.
Shonkoff, J. P., Siegel, B. S., Garner, A. S., Dobbins, M. I., Earls, M. F., & McGuinn, L. (2012). The lifelong effect of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), 232–246.
Weatherston, D. J. (2000). The infant mental health specialist. Washington, DC: Zero to Three.
Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 89–97.
World Association for Infant Mental Health, Tampere, Finland. (2017). Retrieved September 18, 2017, from https://www.waimh.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3289
Zeanah, C. H. (2009). The handbook of infant mental health. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Zeanah, C. H., & Boris, N. W. (2000). In C. H. Zeanah (Ed.),. Handbook of infant mental health Disturbances and disorders of attachment in early childhood. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Zeanah, P., Stafford, B., & Zeanah, C. (2005). Clinical interventions to enhance infant mental health: A selective review. Los Angeles, CA: National Center for Infant and Early Childhood Healthy Policy at UCLA.
ZERO TO THREE. (2017). Infant and early childhood mental health. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE. Retrieved September 18, 2017, from https://www.zerotothree.org/early-development/infant-and-early-childhood-mental-health
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stein, R., Njoroge, W.F.M., Dunn, D.M. (2019). Introduction Assessment in Early Childhood. In: Frankel, K.A., Harrison, J., Njoroge, W.F.M. (eds) Clinical Guide to Psychiatric Assessment of Infants and Young Children. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10635-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10635-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10634-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10635-5
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)