Infant Mental Health Home Visiting (IMH-HV)
A needs-driven, relationship-focused intervention for parents and infants/toddlers aged 0 (pregnancy) to 36 months.
Infant Mental Health Home Visiting (IMH-HV) aims to meet the needs of families at risk for relationship problems, child abuse and/or neglect and behavioral health concerns. Families are eligible for IMH-HV if either the parent or child have concerns that make them more susceptible to disruptions in the parent-child relationship (e.g., parent mental health, child social-emotional and regulatory concerns).
IMH-HV is delivered weekly in families’ homes by Master’s-level providers. Through a multifaceted approach, IMH-HV aims to increase parental competencies, promote mental health and sensitive caregiving, and thus reduce risk for the infant/toddler and lessen the probability of intergenerational transmission of the effects of unresolved loss and trauma in parents.
IMH-HV has been evaluated by the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry in partnership with these organizations and universities:
Michigan is widely recognized as the “birthplace” of infant mental health practice. While IMH-HV has been implemented and delivered to families eligible for Medicaid through the public mental health system in Michigan for 50 years, it previously lacked efficacy data to meet specified state and federal standards, thus risking the sustainability of the treatment model and its ongoing funding. The Michigan Department of Human Health and Services (MDHHS) approached the Zero to Thrive (Z2T) faculty at the University of Michigan (UM) to pursue rigorous evaluation of IMH-HV program effectiveness.
Principal Investigators Dr. Katherine Rosenblum and Dr. Maria Muzik, coalesced a leadership team comprised of policy and infant mental health advocacy organizations and a research team comprised of prominent infant and early childhood researchers across 8 regional universities, who collectively designed, implemented and analyzed data from two quasi-experimental studies completed in the community and one university-based randomized control trial. Data and subsequent publications from these evaluations provided the basis for IMH-HV’s 2021 CEBC submission and eventual rating. MDHHS, Z2T, and the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health will collaborate in ongoing efforts to disseminate the model.
