The Infant-Parent Institute, Inc. - Infant Mental Health

Over the past two decades, the Institute has conducted courses and training seminars across North America. We have trained more than 2,200 clinicians in a specific method of assessment and intervention with troubled families and their babies.

THE INFANT-PARENT INSTITUTE
announces an offering of the four-day intensive seminar:

“INFANT MENTAL HEALTH: A PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC MODEL OF ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION”

This four-day seminar—always referred to as the Brief Course in Infant Mental Health—was a staple of Mr. Trout’s training courses for 25 consecutive years, until it was retired. More than 2,000 clinicians and academics from all over North America—in small groups of 20—graduated from this training course. The curriculum has been revised and the Brief Course made available as a special offering this fall.

Tuition: $495 ($75 reduction for registrations received before 9-15)
Dates: November 16-19
Location: The Loft (small conference room at the home of Michael Trout, Director, The Infant-Parent Institute, Urbana, IL)

The seminar group will be limited to 10 participants. Lunch will be provided each day. Lodging information will be provided, but some participants will be able to stay with Institute staff members, at no charge.

Registration form
The registration form must accompany any form of payment.
(you can send in your check or call to pay on the phone 217-344-3212)

Most of the courses offered by the Institute are portable and can be customized to various settings. From three- and four-day courses to shorter presentations, please call us to discuss your preferred format. Possible topics include:

•	The nature of human attachments in infancy — how they work, what difference it makes if attachments are absent and/or conflicted.
•	Attachment in the life cycle; how early experience is manifested in later life.
•	A model for conducting home-based assessment of troubled infant-parent dyads.
•	A model for home-based psychotherapeutic intervention with troubled infant-parent dyads.
•	Separation and loss in infancy: short- and long-term results of infant hospitalization, foster care, adoption, institutional daycare, parental death or parental divorce.
•	Special challenges to attachment: how to nurture families of terminally ill or disabled babies/toddlers.
•	Reproductive loss: the impact on mothers, fathers and siblings of miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, neonatal death, death of one twin, infertility, reversed adoption, and induced abortion.
•	The development of emotional expressiveness in boys; how boys become men, and men become fathers.
•	The impact of domestic violence on prenates, infants and toddlers.

This lecture series is sponsored by the Center for Men and Masculinity and is dedicated to the 20th Anniversary of The Infant-Parent Institute. The lectures are intended for all audiences and are given by Martin Srajek, Ph.D., LCSW. Click here for additional information.

In addition to courses and seminars, the Institute offers long distance clinical supervision. This program is presented as an option in high-quality supervisory attention for infant mental health clinicians who have a powerful investment in the optimal development of infants and their families, but who feel isolated in their clinical endeavors and without support or supervision in their daily walk with families in trouble.

Clinical Traineeship

Since the early 1980s, Mr. Trout has accepted one experienced professional each year (from pediatric medicine and psychology, special education, social work, nursing, etc.) for 10 months of intensive individual supervision, practicum experiences and seminars. The traineeship begins in September and most trainees are able to complete requirements by late June of the following year. Basic traineeship requirements can be met in one Institute day per week if the trainee has access to referrals for the clinical practicum in his/her home area, allowing a trainee to continue employment.

To receive more detailed information on any of the Institute’s services, please click here for appropriate contact information.

CERTIFICATION TRAINING IN PRENATAL BONDING (BA): A NEW STRATEGY FROM EUROPEAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR FACILITATING BOTH ATTACHMENT AND DIFFERENTIATION WITH THE PRENATE

The Infant-Parent Institute sponsored the introduction of a psychoanalytic technique known in Europe as “Bindungs-Analyse”, beginning with an introductory training workshop on Saturday and Sunday, March 27-28, 2010, in Urbana, Illinois.

The workshop was lead by Gerhard Schroth, M.D., psychiatrist and psychoanalyst from Speyer, Germany, who trains clinicians in Germany. The originator of the method, Jenoe Raffai of Hungary, sanctioned Dr. Schroth to offer trainings in the United States, and to commence trainings in the US that will lead to certification.

At Dr. Schroth’s presentation of a paper entitled, , attended by Michael Trout, Director of the Infant-Parent Institute, Mr. Trout was intrigued at the prospects for supporting mothers coming to know their babies well before birth, and for the exquisite preparation the method makes possible for her differentiation and release of the baby for birth.

In a review of a paper offered by Dr. Schroth in California (“Trans-generational Impacts of Prenatal Violence – A Case Study in Prenatal Bonding”), Mr. Trout wrote:

My reserved Scot heritage—and, perhaps, my own analytic training in the rich heydays of that world at the University of Michigan—probably played a part in my appreciating so much this German psychoanalyst’s reserve, his clarity, and the modesty of his claims. But not for a second did his passion fail to reveal itself as he taught us about the work of Jenoe Raffai in Hungary, and his own in Speyer, Germany. He described a 20- to 30-session procedure during which an expectant mother comes to honor her uterus, contact her unborn baby, experience her baby’s responses, clear away the nearly-inevitable unconscious conflicts, and accomplish a preparatory separation from baby.

In his elegant case presentation, we learned how a mother becomes able to negotiate the incredibly complex path to profound intimacy with the child inside her, while preparing for a differentiated relationship with the child who will soon be outside of her. Perhaps most compelling of all is the awareness of each other that grows between mother and baby, and the respect implied as they each learn about the other. Simply grand.

The method shows promise for reducing perinatal depression, changing the birth experience (far lower rates of c-section delivery and premature delivery, reduced birth trauma, reduced infant crying), and facilitating attachment following birth.

The extraordinary success of the two-day workshop--attended by 35 participants representing a variety of fields, from 13 states and 3 countries--made it possible for Dr. Schroth and Mr. Trout to announce the commencement of a clinical training program in Prenatal Bonding (BA), leading to certification. The program will include four sessions, of four days each, over a period of two years, plus clinical supervision.

The dates for the certification training series have now been established, and many of the arrangements completed. The 2011 dates will be April 26-30 and October 10-14. The training site will be the I-Hotel, on the campus of the University of Illinois. Many of those coming from out-of-town will be able to stay (at no charge) with registrants who live in the area, which will help to create far lower room and board costs than originally anticipated. Lunches will be included in the registration fee. The registration fee will be $840.

Dr. Schroth will be handling the registration process, which will include a personal phone interview. To register go to www.schroth-apv.com/PrenatalBondingBA.