"The experience of hospitalised infants and their families, what can they teach us about the infant’s moral development in the face of profound conflict and societal trauma?"
A Prof Campbell Paul, Royal Children’s and Royal Women’s Hospitals Melbourne
A Prof Miri Keren, Bar Ilan University Azrieli School of Medicine

Abstract:
There are many profound traumatic disruptions which may impact the ordinary infant’s pathway to healthy emotional development and safe sense of self. What is the personal experience of infants and young children with chronic medical illness or serious traumatic or emotional injury and how does their experience affect their sense of hopefulness and the presents of a just world? Winnicott, Emde (1990) and other developmental researchers and clinicians have explored the sense of morality and justice within the baby and very young child. What are the factors, within the infant and within the infant-caregiver relationship that might foster a “good enough” sense of ongoing hopefulness for the child within the family and of the world around them? Infants living through exceptionally distressing circumstances such as extremely and complicated premature birth, serious illness or injury often require repeated painful medical and nursing procedures and yet they may seem able to emerge through prolonged and repeated hospitalisation with a sense of hope and trust in the world. The goal of the attuned infant mental health clinician is to support the infant’s ongoing internal integrity and trust in the world. The therapist may do this through direct engagement with the baby, and psychotherapeutic work with the baby’s parents and other carers. The new baby entering the world brings to the family shared hope and expectation. Infant mental health services can support those caring for sick and traumatised infants to minimise the impact of trauma on them and their parents. However, how do families caught up within major catastrophes, forced displacement, civil strife and the horrors of war, help their young children emerge from trauma and continue life with hope intact?

Prof Keren will discuss how we can support infants, families and carers, through retaining our own capacity for therapeutic reflective functioning; to be able think about and with the infant and family experience of trauma. This also means working with and building strong networks within our fragile communities.

Presented at WAIMH 2024 Interim World Congress
June 5th, 2024 Tampere, Finland