BABIES IN MIND Babies in Mind is a Primary Mental Health Care initiative that aims at:

1. Babies in Mind is informed by psychodynamic theory, and this is used as a basis to educate, guide and support new parents. Targeting infancy - 0 to 12 months -provides the opportunity to start addressing mental health issues early in life, establishing the foundation for a mentally stable person, and hence a more stable future for South African society. Early parenting is crucial for a child’s development, and a healthy parent-child relationship reduces the risk of later mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Mental health rests on the foundation of infancy. Empathic and attuned parenting, together with an optimal bond - secure attachment - between parents and their babies are crucial for psychological development. These factors facilitate in the infant the establishment of trust, emotional security, and later psychological and psychiatric health. Optimal parenting patterns - where the primary caregivers are aware of and responsive to the psychological needs of their babies - begins early, even before birth. Some of the mental instability that effects children and adults in South African society could be prevented if new parents and early caregivers were given the psychological education and emotional support that they need during the first year of their children’s lives. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men Frederick Douglas • BABIES IN MIND • Babies in Mind is a Primary Mental Health Care initiative that aims at: • Prevention of mental illness in new parents - particularly postnatal depression in new mothers - through emotional support, guidance, psycho-education and psychological screening • Prevention of future mental illness in infants due to a focus on the development of a healthy parent-infant relationship and education about babies’ psychological needs • Promotion of mental health in parents and their babies • Babies in Mind involves the training and ongoing supervision of mental health professionals to conduct specialised workshops with new parents and/or early caregivers. The workshops are an attempt to promote infant mental health, provide psychological support to parents and optimize and facilitate the parent/infant relationship. The workshops provide an ideal opportunity to: • screen for postnatal depression and anxiety • improve the quality of the mental state of parents and infants • improve the relationship between parents and their infants • Improve the relationship between the parents • Phase 1: (Private sector) Licensing of mental health professionals to run workshops with new parents. • Phase 2: (Public sector) Training of state employed registered nurse/midwives to run workshops with new parents in under-resourced and disadvantaged communities. • Phase 3: (Research) Evaluation of the project and the efficacy of the workshops. • The Babies in Mind project is currently in Phase 1. Phase 2 and 3 are still to be executed. • For more information, contact Jenny Perkel at 2721-4619153, jenny@perkel.co.za or visit www.babiesinmind.co.za. Phase 2 Ten of the licensed Babies in Mind practitioners from around South Africa (four from Gauteng, two from Kwazulu Natal, two from the Eastern Cape and two from the Western Cape) will receive additional training from Jenny Perkel. They will in turn provide training to registered nurse/midwives in disadvantaged and impoverished areas to conduct Babies in Mind workshops. These nurse/midwives will already be based in postnatal clinics and thus paid by state authorities or by the future NHI. The training that the registered nurses receive will equip them to conduct Babies in Mind workshops for parents who attend the postnatal clinics in which the nurses are already stationed, thus increasing sustainability. • Phase 1 • Trained and highly skilled mental health practitioners have been invited to apply to become licensed Babies in Mind practitioners. These practitioners conduct specialised Babies in Mind workshops for parents and early caregivers, based on: • the book, Babies in Mind • a detailed training manual • ongoing supervision and support from clinical psychologist, author and project co-ordinator, Jenny Perkel. Phase 3 Research and evaluation of the project and the workshops. The project itself will be evaluated based on the SWOT model. The workshops conducted by the registered nurses and the Babies in Mind practitioners will be evaluated on the stated objectives (that is, promoting infant mental health, optimizing the parent-infant relationship, screening for postnatal depression and anxiety, and improving mental state of the parents and relationship between parents). The most effective measuring/assessment tools still need to be decided on, but a qualitative methodology is likely to give the most detailed, comprehensive and comprehensible results.