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Health & Wellbeing: Give babies the feel-good factor

Understanding mental health issues in babies requires specific expertise – yet this means they are often overlooked. By Annette Rawstrone
Mental health issues exhibit differently in babies and infants
Mental health issues exhibit differently in babies and infants

Despite increasing attention on children and young people's mental health, there is an ongoing ‘baby blind spot’ in mental health services and also in wider public policies that is leading to gaps in their treatment and care.

‘Professionals across different services can have very different levels of understanding about early child development and mental health,’ explains Sally Hogg, senior policy fellow at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL). ‘Gaps in understanding make it less likely that babies’ and young children's needs are identified, and that they get appropriate, timely support. The language used around mental health also differs across services, which can make it harder to work together to understand and respond to a young child's needs.

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