Infant-Parent Mental Health Post-Graduate Certificate Program

Objectives and Goals

The IPMHPCP consists of 10 intensive 3-day weekends of training in the form of interactive and dynamic-didactic/classroom hours. Each session will address larger topic areas within the field of Infant-Parent Mental Health and include theoretical foundations and research, assessment, and video-tape observation with a heavy emphasis on clinical application of the material and dyadic parent-infant psychotherapy.

Course Objectives

The IPMHPCP intends to have an immediate and lasting impact on communities through an intense involvement of Fellows in programs serving children age 0-5. The Course Objectives are to train an interdisciplinary group of professionals to:

  • Support and employ promotion, prevention, and early intervention strategies to optimize social-emotional and cognitive development, and the relationship of infants and their caregivers;
  • Provide consultation and advocacy in a variety of settings, including schools, child care, pediatric practices, home visiting programs, etc.;
  • Forward, support, and develop policies that address the primacy of early relationships as fundamental to lifelong individual and community health, well-being, and learning;
  • Improve access within communities to a wider range of assessment and intervention modalities through professionals that are skilled and qualified to administer and interpret assessments, and plan and implement interventions;
  • Increase awareness of the dynamics involved in comprehensive assessment of infants, children and their caregivers, including development, mutual and self-regulatory capacities, and the attachment relationships, and in the development of comprehensive service plans to address prevention, early intervention, and treatment needs;
  • Within the scope of the provider’s discipline and licensing, treat infants, young children and/or parents with various emotional, social and constitutional disorders;
  • Use the Diagnostic Codes for 0-3 (DC:03R), DSM-IV, and ICLD diagnostic codes in the evaluation and diagnostic process and,
  • Develop community-based interdisciplinary teams able to provide preventive interventions, screening and comprehensive evaluation and assessment, develop and implement intervention plans for children 0-5 and their parents, and influence policy development related to IPMH.

Learning Goals

The IPMHPCP goals are to prepare individual professionals who:

  • Are highly skilled and invested in infant-parent work;
  • Have an integrated understanding of infant-parent relationships, regulatory, and social-emotional/mental health concepts and theories;
  • Have an understanding of the major theorists, researchers, and clinicians in the area of social-emotional development, infant-parent mental health, and infant-caregiver relationships;
  • Are invested in an interdisciplinary approach to promotion, prevention, screening, assessment, treatment, monitoring, and policy development; and,
  • Are able, within their scope of practice, to provide promotion, prevention, screening, assessment, treatment, and monitoring of children age 0-5, their parents and other caregivers.