Introduction: Infant mental health is a significant public health issue as early adversity and childhood stress has life-long consequences for the affected children. One in five Danish families is at risk of inadequate parenting resources and child neglect. There is a lack of knowledge on best practice in screening for and preventing adverse infant mental health risks.
Aims: The overall aim of CIMHP is to test the feasibility of an infant mental health screening and indicated prevention system and its capacity to (1) detect children at risk of longer term mental health adversities and (2) alter these risks in a cost effective way in a general population.
Methods: In a period of 20 months 8.800 mothers and infants in Copenhagen are screened (at 2, 4 and 8 months) using two standardized screening instruments: 1) Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) in detecting infant social withdrawal and 2) Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in detecting maternal postpartum depression. A sample of 326 eligible parent(s) enters into a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of an attachment based intervention program, Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P), compared to Care as usual (CAU) in preventing mental health adversities and enhancing parental sensitivity and attachment security. Outcomes are measured at follow-up and include parental sensitivity and reflective functioning, child attachment, child social emotional and cognitive development.
Results: Preliminary results from the study will be presented focusing mainly on the results from screening part of the study.
Conclusion: On the basis of our results we will discuss the importance of screening programs for early infant mental risks and indicated prevention programs aiming at enhancing parental sensitivity and child attachment. If proved effective these will represent a notable advance to initiating this system as a better infant mental health strategy in Denmark.