Infant-Parent Training Institute:
What is Infant Mental Health?

Infant mental health is the field of study and practice focused on ensuring the social and emotional health and well being of our youngest children. Healthy early development involves the capacities to: experience, regulate, and express emotion; form close, secure, interpersonal relationships; and explore the environment and learn - all in the cultural context of family and community. Supporting the mental health of an infant or toddler involves promoting nurturing environments for parents and other significant caregivers and early identification of risk factors that may compromise a child's growth.

Because young children's social experiences and opportunities to explore the world depend on the love and care they receive, the child and the child's relationships are central to "infant mental health." It is essential to ensure that first relationships are trusting and caring, as early relationships provide an important foundation for later development.

Social development includes the ability to form healthy relationships with others and the knowledge of social rules and standards. Emotional development includes the experience of feelings about self and others with a range of positive and negative emotions as well as the ability to regulate feelings in culturally appropriate ways. The development of self-worth, self-confidence and self-regulation are important features of social-emotional development. Healthy social-emotional development is essential for success in relationships, in learning and in life.

Infant mental health involves knowing about:

• how infants, toddlers and parents grow and develop
• what factors support or impede early development
• what helps to develop resilience
• how infants begin to relate to others
• what can go wrong and how to give infants the best start
• how cultural context affects parent-infant relationships
• and what we as professionals, parents and community can do to help give young children the best opportunities for present well-being and future development

Some of the content for this page was adapted from What is Infant Mental Health? By Dr. Joy Osofsky, Director, Harris Center for Infant Mental Health at LSU Health Sciences Center, and For Early Childhood Professionals: Support Social and Emotional Development, from HRSA Publication CA-0037.