Understanding the social context of co- and self-regulatory problems: a promising strategy in preventive mental health care.

The combination of the growing mental health care burden and the limited human and monetary resources for health stresses the clear need for effective prevention strategies. It is increasingly demonstrated that regulatory problems in infancy – resulting from co-regulation difficulties within the caregiver(s)-child relationship – hold extreme importance for mental health, constituting the seeds for emergent developmental psychopathology and persistent mental health problems later in life. However, to date, there has been limited fundamental research which aims to intervene in this vicious cycle of mental health problems, especially with respect to (1) understanding the vicious cycle of regulatory problems within a larger social context and (2) exploring how to structurally prevent and treat infant regulatory problems. In the current FWO-proposal, I will address these gaps using a mixed-method multi-stakeholder design focusing on 3 research objectives: (1) disentangling the micro vicious cycle of dysregulation within the parent(s)-child interaction and understanding how this vicious cycle is impacted by and impacts environmental stressors, taking into account gender and SES differences, (2) investigating the experiences of professional childcare workers in addressing regulatory problems, and (3) exploring effective strategies to structurally optimize infant mental health care around self- and co-regulation.

Keywords:MENTAL HEALTH, PREVENTIVE CARE

Disciplines:Health and community services, Mental healthcare services, Sociology of family, Sociology of health