Infants Have Mental Health Needs Too

‘Eat, Sleep, Poop…Repeat.’ You’ve probably seen this on a baby’s onesie, and it seems to capture the entirety of an infant’s daily reality. With such simple needs, and presumably underdeveloped emotional maturity, infants probably don’t have much to worry about. But research is increasingly showing that some of the mental health concerns of teenagers and adults can be traced all the way back to infancy, which means that we do need to pay attention to the mental, emotional and social needs of babies. Dr Rajini Sarvananthan, Consultant Developmental Paediatrician, joins us for some baby-whispering, to help us better understand signs of poor infant mental health and what it means to nurture good mental health during early childhood.

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