Babies may not have ‘mental health’ in the way that we understand it for older children and adults, but they do have strong feelings and need support with them.
Dr Matt Price, strategic lead for clinical psychology and psychotherapy at Barnardo’s, says it is easy for the mental health needs of babies to be overlooked. ‘We struggle to think about babies in terms of their feelings and social and emotional development,’ he says. ‘The focus for babies is often much more on recording physical development, how they are feeding and how they are sleeping.’
Dr Abi Miranda, head of early years and prevention at Anna Freud, agrees that despite a lot of work in the past few years to champion the mental health needs of babies, there can still be a lack of awareness. ‘Babies’ mental health is very different to the mental health of older children, in that positive mental health is relianton having parents and caregivers who are mentally healthy and have their basic needs met,’ she explains.
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