Promoting Mental Health

Child Mental Health

The notion of promoting social-emotional development and mental health is not new to Head Start. In his 1979 critique of the Head Start Program, Edward Zigler, one of its founders stated, "We should have never allowed the intelligence (IQ) score to become the ultimate indicator of compensatory education's success or future...The goal of Head Start is the production of socially competent human beings."

The development of social competence and school readiness is of paramount concern to our society. Social and economic changes in the country are posing challenges to parents as they attempt to balance spending quality time with their children with making a living and protecting them from environmental risks affecting their health and development.

As a national laboratory, Head Start has always been a leader in the field of early childhood, recognizing the needs of low-income young children and acknowledging the impediments that need to be addressed to help them learn and grow. Children's school experience is more positive and productive when they have a sense of personal well-being and when they are grounded in stable, caring relationships in their early lives. Unhappy, fearful, or angry children are preoccupied with their struggles and their pain. This makes them unable to give their full attention and engagement to learning experiences.

Mental health needs exist on a continuum. Services to address those needs can range from activities and interventions designed to help children develop self-confidence; to interventions for children dealing with socio-economic disadvantages and social disorganization, abuse, and family disruptions; to diagnosed disabilities and health challenges. The relatively new field of infant mental health brings a multi-disciplinary perspective that enhances our understanding of infant competency, the parent/infant relationship, child development, and risk and protective factors that affect development, assessment, prevention, and intervention. This perspective seeks to enhance a family's strengths while addressing those circumstances that can threaten it.

The impacts of poverty, substance abuse, violence, physical and sexual abuse, and teen pregnancy are undeniable. Early Head Start and Head Start can help facilitate the unfolding of healthy self-esteem and internal regulation. They can teach how to tolerate, experience, and modulate deeply felt emotions–skills that lead to social competence and the capacity to participate in a learning environment.

Some key social skills are respecting the rights of others, relating to peers without being too submissive or too overbearing, being willing to give and receive support, and treating others the way one would like to be treated. Recent early childhood research, such as From Neurons to Neighborhoods and the Surgeon General's Report on Children's Mental Health, has demonstrated that developing social skills are seriously affected by the infant or young child's early experiences and the quality of early relationships. What Early Head Start and Head Start staff members do in a variety of settings and with a variety of populations can have a monumental effect on families and on society. We know that the chances of favorable outcomes, particularly when working with extremely vulnerable, emotionally damaged populations, are increased when we create nurturing, responsive environments and well-informed, well-planned interventions based on current knowledge and outcomes-based research.

As Head Start continues to encourage increased knowledge and advanced credentials within its programs, staff must also bring an increased sensitivity, awareness, sophistication, and skill level in addressing creatively the mental health needs of our children and families. The emotional needs of children and families dealing with serious life issues require a new level of emotional commitment and strength from the staff who works with them. Staff members who work with families dealing with challenging situations need to identify and reinforce their strengths, celebrate their successes, and build on the positive relationships and experiences that Head Start provides. This, in turn, demands that administrators and program supervisors provide adequate training, supervision, and emotional support for staff facing the challenge of remaining emotionally present in the face of tremendous stress, emotional pain, and challenging behaviors.

The articles in this issue of the Head Start Bulletin describe some of the most current interventions and issues affecting pregnant women, father involvement, and children birth to five, as well as some innovative program models. The Head Start Bureau and its collaborative partners are committed to reinforcing the message that mental health does not just refer to interactions between patients and therapists but to the quality of relationships in our centers and the confidence we feel in successfully creating happiness in our lives. The ways that we use curriculum to support emotional connections, the honest acknowledgement of strengths and challenges, and how we support and encourage staff all reflect Head Start's mandate to create atmospheres of social competence and mental health. We invite you to consider how your program might be able to incorporate some of the successes described here to improve the lives of your children and families. In this Bulletin, we also introduce you to Windy Hill, the Associate Commissioner for the Head Start Bureau. Windy has been involved with Head Start for many years, as a child in the program and as a parent, and she is a strong advocate for all that is best for Head Start children, families, and staff.

Beverly Gould was a 2000-2001 Head Start Fellow. T: 202-554-0484; E: priyadarsa@aol.com.

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