Optimizing Foundations of Mental Health: A Perinatal Prevention Targeting Offspring Neurodevelopment During Pregnancy and the First Year of Life

About

About the speaker:

Dr. Luby is the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Psychiatry (Child) at the Washington University School of Medicine where she founded and leads the Early Emotional Development Program. As an infant/preschool psychiatrist her program of research has focused on early childhood affective psychopathology and emotional development for >35 years. Based on this work, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. With her colleagues, she has conducted some of the first large scale empirical studies of preschool onset depression and provided data on the validity, clinical characteristics, longitudinal course and brain developmental outcomes of early onset depression. With close colleague Deanna Barch, she has conducted a 17-year longitudinal study that investigates behavior and brain development in a sample enriched for depressive symptoms arising at age 3 that includes 5 waves of neuroimaging. Our findings have informed the impact of key psychosocial factors including maternal support and early life adversity on brain and behavioral development. These studies have established the powerful role of early childhood caregiver support and psychosocial adversity on neurodevelopment, a finding with tremendous potential to impact the developmental health of children worldwide and that has resulted in a powerful and novel early intervention. This work was recently recognized by the Dean of the School of Medicine with the research innovator award. More recent work has elucidated the mechanisms of the biological embedding of adversity pointing to key protective factors to facilitate thriving in infancy. Building on these findings, she is developing an earlier preventive intervention that starts in pregnancy to achieve this in a feasible and cost-effective manner.

About the talk:

In this talk the speaker will review new data to inform how experiences of early adversity become biologically embedded as early as the prenatal period. The findings from a longitudinal observational study that started in utero reveal 5 basic resources that human infants need to thrive: caregiver nurturance and support, regular circadian rhythms and sleep, good nutrition, stimulation and safety. The talk will present a novel perinatal prevention that is a hybrid app with zoom coaching to enhance the provision of these basic needs starting in pregnancy. The scientific rationale and public health implications of this approach will be reviewed.

This presentation is relevant to mental health clinicians of all types interested in early childhood development and risk and prevention of psychopathology at an intermediate level. The speaker has reported no conflicts of interest or commercial support for this talk.