Thursday, October 13, 2011

On Observations of a Behavioral Pediatrician: Facilitating children’s healthy emotional development

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What is infant mental health? A case of a hitting toddler http://t.co/Zv0Lx2wO via @BostonDotCom
about 12 hours ago
Keeping Your Child in Mind - A Book Review http://t.co/4ynY5ZIP
1 day ago
Experts debate proposed child mental health disorder diagnosis http://t.co/7VHQoedT
3 days ago
Pediatrician Claudia Gold urges parents to see world as kids do - Berkshire Eagle Online http://t.co/6yTVHfCJ via @BerkshireEagle
4 days ago
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Claudia Gold's Twitter feed, from which the four items above are drawn, is an indication of her focus. Here is a paragraph from her blog describing her new practice.
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There are two major problems with the term "infant mental health." First of all, it implies that there is such a thing as infant mental illness, which is, in my opinion, not the case. Second, when say that I am a pediatrician who treats behavior problems in children under age five, most people are puzzled. I tell them that I give parents space and time to reflect, and to be curious about the meaning of behavior, with the aim of getting development back on a healthy path. Still the blank look. I have found that the best way to explain it is through stories, as I do in my book Keeping Your Child in Mind.
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Two items of note, the first, her statement that "there is no such a thing as infant mental illness." True? Second, the very fact of her starting a specialty practice of behavioral pediatrics. Is she one-of-a-kind or are there other behavioral pediatricians whose focus is strictly on young children? And then there is this from her blog header description.
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I will show how contemporary research in child development can be applied to support parents in their efforts to facilitate their children’s healthy emotional development. I will address factors that converge to obstruct such support. These include limited access to quality mental health care, influences of a powerful health insurance industry and intensive marketing efforts by the pharmaceutical industry.

Her short list of" factors that ... obstruct" is interesting, citing, as she does, both the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The "medicated child" (see the previous post on this blog) is an agreed upon topic for discussion at our next meeting of the Peninsulas Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation group. -gw

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