scholarly journals Like Taking a Magnifying Glass Into Everyday Life: Vulnerable Parents’ Experiences With Video Guidance in an Infant Mental Health Clinic

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra Simhan ◽  
Kari Vik ◽  
Marius Veseth ◽  
Aslak Hjeltnes

Background: Parents are a central focus in clinical infant mental health interventions because of the key importance of the caregiver-infant relationship, especially when dyads are burdened by psychosocial and parental mental health problems. However, knowledge is scarce about the lived experience of vulnerable parents who undergo video-based guidance.Aim: The study explores how parents in an infant-psychiatric outpatient clinic who struggled to mentalize and remain emotionally connected to their infant experienced helpful and challenging elements in video guidance.Method: We analyzed the interviews of a strategic sample of 12 parents after undergoing Marte Meo video guidance, using a team-based, reflexive thematic analysis (TA).Results: We identified four main themes: (a) Handling initial feelings of fear and loss of control; (b) Filming as a disturbing or agentic experience; (c) Feeling validated or devalued in the therapeutic relationship; and (d) Bringing insights from video guidance into everyday life. Therapeutic and existential factors became apparent in the main themes of adjustment to the guidance, experiences with filming, the therapeutic relationship and integration of new experiences.Conclusion: The parents’ sense of agency, dignity, and shame may be important for their ability to integrate new ideas about themselves.Implications: Video guidance for vulnerable parents in specialized clinical treatment should address relational challenges, parental mental health, and issues of recognition.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra Simhan ◽  
Kari Vik ◽  
Marius Veseth ◽  
Aslak Hjeltnes

Abstract Background Interventions that promote infant mental health face challenges when applied for parents who struggle with psychosocial and psychological burdens. Video-based guidance using the Marte Meo method is used in specialized clinical settings with high-risk families to improve parent-child interaction, parental sensitivity and mentalizing. However, knowledge about the lifeworlds of these parents and their experiences of the therapeutic process during video guidance is limited. Aim This qualitative study explores how parents in an infant mental health outpatient clinic who had difficulties mentalizing and maintaining an emotional connection with their infants experienced the change process during Marte Meo video guidance. Methods We identified a strategic sample of parents with difficulties mentalizing and maintaining an emotional connection with their infants through the Parent Development Interview. Twelve parents received video guidance and were afterwards interviewed in-depth. The research interviews were qualitatively analysed via a team-based reflexive thematic analysis. Result We identified four themes: a) feeling inadequate or disconnected as a parent; b) discovering the infant as a relating and intentional person; c) becoming more agentic and interconnected; and d) still feeling challenged by personal mental health issues. Conclusion Parents described positive changes in their interactions, in mentalizing their infants, the relationship and themselves as parents, in their experiences of self-efficacy and on a representational level. They also described increased confidence and improved coping despite ongoing personal mental health challenges. The findings suggest that video guidance using the Marte Meo method can be a critical intervention for vulnerable parents but should be coordinated with parents’ primary treatments when complex parental mental health issues are involved.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. 102-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Bezborodovs ◽  
G. Thornicroft

SummaryWork plays an important part in everyday life. For people experiencing mental health problems employment may both provide a source of income, improved self-esteem and stability, and influence the course and outcomes of the disorder. Yet in many countries the work-place consistently surfaces as the context where people with mental health problems feel stigmatised and discriminated the most. This paper will review the existing evidence of stigma and discrimination in the workplace, consider the consequences of workplace stigma on the lives of people experiencing mental health problems, and discuss implications for further action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
U Bauer ◽  
O Okan ◽  
F Faulbaum

Abstract Background Teachers have an important role to play in context of mental health literacy (MHL) promotion of school-aged children. Their MHL is seen as the counterpart of student`s health literacy. Especially vulnerable schoolchildren such as those affected by adverse life events (e.g. parental mental health problems) can benefit from programs. In addition, the whole school environment has impact on school mental health promotion. Yet, only little evidence is available on teachers MHL in Europe. The aim is to provide evidence from a state-wide survey on the state of MHL of teachers in Germany. Methods Based on semi-structured interviews with school teachers from all school types in one federal state, including primary and secondary schools, a MHL online questionnaire was developed. The survey was conducted in in 2017 in N = 2500 teachers in Germany. Descriptive and regression analyse have been performed. Results Teachers feel considerable uncertainties when working with children affected by adversities related to parental mental health problems. Dealing with the social family background seems hard. Teachers state that they don`t feel comfortable when aiming at mental health promotion of affected children or children in general. Data also show that they may tend to make misjudgements, and that they are not sufficiently trained to address mental health issues in the classrooms. Regression models show that the degree and quality of teaching mental health is affected by differences across school forms, satisfaction with and engagement of school principals in mental health action, learned strategies to respond to parents, and experienced stress, burden and exposure during their work. Conclusions Increasing teacher MHL and the environmental capacities and responsiveness towards school mental health promotion should be an important capacity building strategy. Policy support for school mental health promotion is a critical means to sustain effective whole-school approaches.


Author(s):  
Hari Krishnan R. ◽  
Hanitha Rajasekar ◽  
Suganthi S.

Background: The whole world became still, when a major pandemic COVID-19 started its toll across all developed and developing countries. It has caused both physical and emotional disturbances among all age groups. This study was done to evaluate the parental mental health in COVID-19 as this group is not given much importance. The major mental health problems associated with COVID-19 among parents are due to online classes which has caused depression, anxiety and stress.Methods: A cross-sectional study done among all parents, especially those of whose children are attending online class were included in the study. Convenient sampling was used to select 204 participants, GHQ 12 questionnaire was used for data collection on mental health status among parents.Results: Overall prevalence of parents with better mental health <19 was 108 (52.9%) and prevalence of parents with poor mental health >19 was 96 (47.1%).Conclusions: This study concluded that parental age of 31 to 40 years who are employed and have children studying in primary school to have a poor mental health status. The most important contributing factors for poor parental health were online classes for children and work place stress.


2020 ◽  
pp. 573-580
Author(s):  
Philippe Delespaul ◽  
Catherine van Zelst

This chapter is about a redesign of mental healthcare, as it evolves in a changing world. It focuses on digital transformations and their impact on social relationships, networks, and communities. It intends to demonstrate better responses to the needs of service users in society. It first defines terminologies to access the changing world and focus on how to understand health, recovery, and well-being in people with lived experience of psychosis. These central elements can be accessed or maintained using eHealth, including mHealth, virtual reality, and eCommunities. It also discuss strengths, challenges, and pitfalls in developing and applying innovative interventions in the context of daily life. It reviews these trends and how these relate to the therapeutic relationship in general, and the mental health practitioner’s role in particular.


Author(s):  
Claire Warrington

Most police Mental Health Act (Section 136) detentions in England and Wales relate to suicide prevention. Despite attempts to reduce detention rates, numbers have risen almost continually. Although Section 136 has been subject to much academic and public policy scrutiny, the topic of individuals being detained on multiple occasions remains under-researched and thus poorly understood. A mixed methods study combined six in-depth interviews with people who had experienced numerous suicidal crises and police intervention, with detailed police and mental health records. A national police survey provided wider context. Consultants with lived experience of complex mental health problems jointly analysed interviews. Repeated detention is a nationally recognised issue. In South East England, it almost exclusively relates to suicide or self-harm and accounts for a third of all detentions. Females are detained with the highest frequencies. The qualitative accounts revealed complex histories of unresolved trauma that had catastrophically damaged interviewee’s relational foundations, rendering them disenfranchised from services and consigned to relying on police intervention in repeated suicidal crises. A model is proposed that offers a way to conceptualise the phenomenon of repeated detention, highlighting that long-term solutions to sustain change are imperative, as reactive-only responses can perpetuate crisis cycles.


2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052093509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Lacey ◽  
Laura D. Howe ◽  
Michelle Kelly-Irving ◽  
Mel Bartley ◽  
Yvonne Kelly

Previous research has demonstrated a graded relationship between the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences reported (an ACE score) and child outcomes. However, ACE scores lack specificity and ignore the patterning of adversities, which are informative for interventions. The aim of the present study was to explore the clustering of ACEs and whether this clustering differs by gender or is predicted by poverty. Data on 8,572 participants of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were used. ALSPAC is a regionally representative prenatal cohort of children born between 1991 and 1992 in the Avon region of South-West England. ACEs included parental divorce, death of a close family member, interparental violence, parental mental health problems, parental alcohol misuse, parental drug use, parental convictions, and sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, between birth and 19 years. Latent class analysis was used to derive ACE clusters and associations between poverty, gender, and the derived classes tested using multinomial logistic regression. Five latent classes were identified: “Low ACEs” (55%), “Parental separation and mother’s mental health problems” (18%), “Parental mental health problems, convictions and separation” (15%), “Abuse and mental health problems” (6%), and “Poly adversity” (6%). Death of a close family member and sexual abuse did not cluster with other adversities. The clustering did not differ by gender. Poverty was strongly related to both individual ACEs and clusters. These findings demonstrate that ACEs cluster in specific patterns and that poverty is strongly related to this. Therefore, reducing child poverty might be one strategy for reducing ACEs.


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