Offers 12 real-life stories written by infant mental health specialists about their work with young children and families. Each case study also reveals the supervision and consultation that supported the specialist, and the specialist's interaction with the larger service system.

What can we do about very young children who cry all the time, or who withdraw, or who resist the very thing they need most: loving care? What can we do about parents who seem lost in the hurts of their own early childhood, and who behave in ways absolutely antithetical to their own stated parenting principles? This is the world of infant mental health, and this book gathers together 25 stories from the author’s 41 years of experience in this remarkable clinical specialty. It will serve as a casebook and guide for infant mental health practitioners, and for the specialized faculty who prepare them. The clarity and accessibility of the cases will, however, make this book compelling to anyone mystified by how our earliest attachment experiences support or confound our later development.

This book presents and explores a number of case studies seminal in the author’s learning of therapy with seriously ill young people and their families. It spans a lifelong process of learning the art and science of child, adolescent and family therapy. It proposes that, through a lengthy career in child and family psychiatry, a therapist’s patients contribute to, and influence, their body of knowledge and experience. In particular, there is a focus on suicidal young people and the therapeutic process that led to their successful recovery.

Grown out of 40 years of experience in Michigan, Infant Mental Health Home Visiting: Supporting Competencies/ Reducing Risks is one of the most comprehensive resources for practitioners and policy makers interested in promoting good infant mental health. This manual is indispensable for infant-family professionals who are looking to incorporate infant mental health principles and promote attachment relationships in their work with babies and families.

The Handbook of Infant, Toddler, and Preschool Mental Health Assessment brings together, for the first time, leading clinical researchers to provide empirically based recommendations for assessment of social-emotional and behavior problems and disorders in the earliest years. Each author presents state-of-the-art information on scientifically valid, developmentally based clinical assessments and makes recommendations based on the integration of developmental theory, empirical findings, and clinical experience. Though the field of mental health assessment in infants and young children lags behind work with older children and adults, recent scientific advances, including new measures and diagnostic approaches, have led to dramatic growth in the field. The editors of this exciting new work have assembled an extraordinary collection of chapters that thoroughly discuss the conceptualizations of dysfunction in infants and young children, current and new diagnostic criteria, and such specific disorders as sensory modulation dysfunction, sleep disorders, eating and feeding disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and ADHD. Chapters further highlight the importance of incorporating contextual factors such as parent-child relationship functioning and cultural background into the assessment process to increase the validity of findings. Given the comprehensiveness of this groundbreaking volume in reviewing conceptual, methodological, and research advances on early identification, diagnosis, and clinical assessment of disorders in this young age group, it will be an ideal resource for teachers, researchers, and a wide variety clinicians including child psychologists, child psychiatrists, early intervention providers, early special educators, social workers, family physicians, and pediatricians.