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Minding the Baby, an interdisciplinary, relationship based home visiting program, was initiated to help young, at-risk new mothers keep their babies (and themselves) “in mind” in a variety of ways. The intervention—delivered by a team that includes a nurse practitioner and clinical social worker—uses a mentalization based approach;
This work was supported by a generous grant from the Irving B. Harris Foundation, and grew out of a collaborative effort between the Yale Child Study Center, the Yale School of Nursing, and the Fair Haven Community Health Center. Other members of the research team who have been essential to our progress are Michelle Patterson, Betsy Houser, Megan Lyons, and Alex Meier-Tomkins. We would also like to thank Jean Adnopoz, the Director of Family Support Services at the Yale Child Study Center, as well as Sean Truman, both of whom were instrumental in getting the program off the ground. Finally, we wish to thank the administration and staff at Fair Haven Community Health Center, particularly Katrina Clark, Kate Mitcheom, Karen Klein, and Laurel Shader, who along with many other members of the pediatric and obstetric services gave Minding the Baby a home.
that is, we work with mothers and babies in a variety of ways to develop mothers' reflective capacities. This approach—which is an adaptation of both nurse home visiting and infant-parent psychotherapy models—seems particularly well suited to highly traumatized mothers and their families, as it is aimed at addressing the particular relationship disruptions that stem from mothers' early trauma and derailed attachment history. We discuss the history of psychoanalytically oriented and attachment based mother-infant intervention, the theoretical assumptions of mentalization theory, and provide an overview of the Minding the Baby program. The treatments of two teenage mothers and their infants are described.