Metrics details. Infant mental health is a significant public health issue as early adversity and exposure to early childhood stress are significant risk factors that may have detrimental long-term developmental consequences for the affected children.
Negative outcomes are seen on a range of areas such as physical and mental health, educational and labor market success, social network and establishing of family. Secure attachment is associated with optimal outcomes in all developmental domains in childhood, and both insecure and disorganized attachment are associated with a range of later problems and psychopathologies.
In disadvantaged populations insecure and disorganized attachment are common, which points to the need of identifying early risk and effective methods of addressing such problems. This protocol describes an experimental evaluation of an indicated group-based parental educational program, Circle of SecurityβParenting COS-P , currently being conducted in Denmark.
In a parallel randomized controlled trial of two intervention groups this study tests the efficacy of COS-P compared to Care as Usual CAU in enhancing maternal sensitivity and child attachment in a community sample in the City of Copenhagen, Denmark. During the project a general population of an estimated Data will be obtained at inclusion baseline and at follow-up when the child is 12β16 months.
The primary outcome is maternal sensitivity. Secondary outcomes include quality of infant attachment, language, cognitive and socioemotional development, family functioning, parental stress, parental mentalizing and maternal mental wellbeing. The potential implications of the experimental evaluation of an indicated brief group-based parenting educational program to enhance parental sensitivity and attachment are discussed.
