Ambulatories cares: Parent–infant psychotherapy in perinatal mental health

Abstract

The peripartum is a time of huge and sometimes overwhelming biological, psychological, and social upheaval for the parents and, in particular, for the future mother. Perinatal disorders affect not only the mother but also the developing child, the infants’ father and, to some extent, the whole family. Prevention and intervention strategies need therefore an integrated and shared work involving both adult and child perinatal health practitioners. Several types of preventive and therapeutic perinatal and parent–infant interventions have been developed over the past 40 years. Some of them aim at improving the quality of parenting and of the mother/parent–infant relationship, others at preventing or treating maternal perinatal distress/mental disorders (in particular depression) and its effects on the child, and others at dealing with infant early behavioral, somatic, and developmental symptoms or delays. In this chapter, we focus on general principles and different models of parent–infant psychotherapy, including psychodynamic and psychoanalytic, attachment-based, cognitive–behavioral, interaction-oriented, and infant-centered approaches, as well as manualized treatments and parent–infant co-therapy.