Copenhagen Infant Mental Health Project

Copenhagen Infant Mental Health Project (CIMHP) is a research project that seeks to promote the mental well-being of infants and their parents. The project is a collaboration between Center for Early Intervention and Family studies at the University of Copenhagen and the City of Copenhagen’s health visitors and the Copenhagen council department for children and youth.

CIMHP has three overall aims. The first is to enhance the health visitors’ ability to identify infants who are at risk for adverse socioemotional development, by implementing and evaluating a new method of screening, the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB). The second is to validate the screening instrument Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale in a Danish setting, which is already used by the health visitors. The third is to compare the efficacy of the Circle of Security-Parenting intervention (COS-P ©) to the preventive interventions which are currently offered by The City of Copenhagen.

The project is funded by Trygfonden, The City of Copenhagen, and The Department of Psychology at The University of Copenhagen.

CIMHP was started in 2015 and the data collection was finished in 2020. Click on the individual projects below to read more about the results so far.

Projects under CIMHP

Implementation and validation of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) as a universal screening instrument in primary care: In collaboration with the health visitors in The City of Copenhagen, the ADBB has been implemented in the health visitors’ practice with children between 2-24 months of age. ADBB is used to detect children who show difficulties with early social and emotional interaction, in order to be able to offer those families extra support or further referral. We are currently evaluating the validity of the ADBB method in a Danish setting.

Validation of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in Denmark: The EPDS scale is a highly acknowledged screening instrument, which has been part of the health visitors’ practice for many years, for detecting mothers with postnatal depression. CIMHP has validated the Danish version of the instrument and can thereby offer evidence-based guidelines, for the employment of EPDS in Denmark.    

Evaluation of the Circle of Security-Parenting intervention (COSP ©) as a service to support new families: In a randomized controlled trial, CIMHP is evaluating the efficacy of the COSP ©, by comparing it to the preventive interventions which are currently offered in The City of Copenhagen.

CIMHP continues to study the use of the ADBB

The ADBB has been validated in several countries. Currently, CIMHP is examining the use of the instrument in Denmark, including how scores on the ADBB are related to other measures, such as birth weight, gestational age, mother-infant interaction and infant temperament. You can read more about our national ADBB project, which focuses on the use of the ADBB across municipalities, risk factors and prevalence: ADBB in Denmark.