DOI:10.1097/YCO.0000000000000553 This section touches on a few vital facets of child and adolescent psychiatry, namely attachment, early life stress, mental health disparities and youth suicide. The development of secure attachment… Click to show full abstract
DOI:10.1097/YCO.0000000000000553 This section touches on a few vital facets of child and adolescent psychiatry, namely attachment, early life stress, mental health disparities and youth suicide. The development of secure attachment is a key task in infancy and early childhood. The type of attachment impacts not only a child’s mental health but also has an enduring effect on interpersonal relationships, emotional regulation skills, cognition and neurobiology through adulthood [1]. Therefore, programs and interventions facilitating the development of optimal attachment warrant special emphasis in preventive psychiatry. In their article – ‘Preventive parent-young child interaction interventions to promote optimal attachment’, authors Tereno et al. (pp. 542–548) shed light on various early intervention programs that focus on enhancing infant secure attachment and reducing the likelihood of disorganized attachment. The programs discussed in this article, primarily target parent– infant/young child interactional experiences, maternal sensitivity and parental disruptive behavior, in addition to a few programs that examine paternal engagement with the infant and/or the parental relationship. Steps Toward Effective Enjoyable Parenting (STEEP), Circle of Security Intervention (COS), Minding the Baby (MTB), VideoFeedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting are some of the recent early intervention programs reviewed in this article. Implementing interventions early in life and specially addressing high-risk/multirisk families can benefit secure attachment development. The authors found that secure attachment may be enhanced through promoting maternal sensitivity and that early interventions can reduce the likelihood of disorganized infant attachment through a reduction in maternal disruptive behavior. Although maltreatment by the parent/primary caregiver often underlies infant disorganized attachment, it is worth noting that infant disorganized attachment can result even when the parent/primary caregiver is nonabusive, but, exhibits ‘frightening, frightened’ or even slightly dissociated behavior towards the infant [2]. These, often subtle, parental behaviors can occur if the parent has ‘unresolved trauma or loss’ or is experiencing acute adversity/crises and related stress dysregulation [2]. This
               
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