Reflective Function and Mentalization
CPD Credits
2
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording for 365 days
Time (UK)
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Standard
£50.00
Trainee/NHS
£42.50
Book Tickets
Reflective Function and Mentalization
Friday, January 31, 2025

Reflective Function and Mentalization

Early Relationships and Mental Health: Session Two

With Dr. Arietta Slade

Dr Arietta Slade, named ‘one of the world’s best experts in this field’ by Peter Fonagy, will offer the second talk in our series on early relationships and mental health designed for a wide range of professionals, including parent-infant psychotherapists, child and adolescent psychotherapists, adult and couple psychotherapists, as well as those working with parents and infants in other settings. 

Dr. Slade works with mothers, babies, and their families to strengthen reflective capacities, focusing on relational disruptions stemming from the mothers' and fathers’ early trauma and attachment histories. This is especially crucial in cases where the parent struggles with Complex Trauma Disorder, linked to chronic caregiving disruptions. Complex Trauma Disorder frequently arises from prolonged relational challenges with primary caregivers, leading to issues like depression, anxiety, self-harm, and difficulties with parenting. Early intervention not only supports the mother but also significantly lowers the baby's risk of developing similar psychopathology later in life. By addressing these patterns in the parents, this therapeutic approach helps break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, fostering healthier outcomes for both parents and child.

Dr Slade is Professor Adjunct at the Yale Child Study Center, and Professor Emerita in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York. An internationally recognised theoretician, clinician, researcher, and teacher, she has published widely on reflective parenting, the clinical implications of attachment theory, the development of parental mentalization, and the relational contexts of early symbolization. She has been co-directing Minding the Baby, an interdisciplinary reflective parenting home visiting program for high-risk mothers, infants, and their families, for over 20 years.  

If you are interested in attending the entire Early Relationships and Mental Health Series please visit the webpage Early Relationships and Mental Health Series-Courses (trtogether.com)

This series is developed in collaboration with the National Centre for Supervision of Parent-Infant Relationships (NCSPIR). NCSPIR offers clinical supervision to practitioners and their supervisors working with parents and infants as part of the UK government’s Family Hubs and Start for Life program, which aims to improve early years services for families with children aged 0 to 2.

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Programme

15.30 Introductions and Housekeeping
15.35 Minding the Baby

Dr.  Slade will present a framework for clinical work that grew out her decades’ work directing Minding the Baby, an interdisciplinary home visiting program aimed at enhancing attachment and mentalizing in parents with histories of complex trauma, adversity, and extreme stress.  A history of severely disrupted attachments poses unique challenges to mentalizing and thus to parenting, insofar as threat and dysregulation preclude intimacy and attunement. The framework – the Relational Foundations of Reflection - is aimed at building secure attachments and mentalizing from ground up.  The path to reflection begins with the establishment of safety, regulation, and trust.  This begins with the clinician, upon whose safety, regulation and reliability parents and children depend.  From their own sense of security, the clinician can then find ways to diminish traumatized parents’ sense of danger and dysregulation, and to create a relationship that will hold the parent and the complexity of their feelings.  Only then can the parent begin to provide safety, regulation, and build a trusting relationship with the child.  

17.00 Q&A
17.30 End