Infant Mental Health: Bridging the Gap From Research to Clinical Practice
Wednesday, 26 March 2008, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Westin Bayshore, Bayshore Ballroom - Salon F
$25 fee (includes refreshments)

Organizers & contacts:
Dr. Prachi Shah - pshah@bcm.edu
Dr. Martin Maldonado - mmaldonado@fsgctopeka.com

This interactive symposium will review the salient research in infant mental health, and discuss how early social emotional development is optimized in the context of the early parent-child relationship. Using videotaped case demonstrations, we will present a theoretical model for early relationship assessment which incorporates the parent's perceptions of the child, and an observation of early dyadic interactions.

We will then attempt to "bridge the gap" between the theories of infant mental health and clinical practice by discussing the findings of approximately 320 infants and their caregivers who presented to an infant mental health clinic with concerns about a disturbance in the early parent-child relationship. We will highlight the “lessons learned” from clinical work with these infants and families, and propose how the research in infant mental health informs the understanding of the clinical phenomena, and guides appropriate multimodal interventions for infants who present with early emotional dysregulation.

Discussion Leaders:

Prachi Shah, MD is a Board Certified Pediatrician and Board-Certified Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She is a former ZERO TO THREE® Solnit Fellow, whose professional and research interests include attachment, the early identification and treatment of parent-child relationship disturbances, and social-emotional development of premature infants.

Martin Maldonado, MD is a board certified child and adolescent psychiatrist, currently a professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and a clinician at the Truman Medical Center, Kansas City Mo. He has worked in the field of infant mental health for 15 years and is mid-career fellow of Zero to Three. He is adjunct professor for infant psychopathology at Kansas State University and clinical professor at Kansas University School of Medicine. He has published multiple articles and several books on the subject of Infant Mental Health.

Also contributing to the is symposium are Dr. Pam MacDonald, Professor of Psychology at Washburn University and Charles Millhuff DO, of the Family Service and Guidance Center, Topeka, Kansas.