I’m ashamed to admit that I was unaware of this until scrolling through our Twitter feed this morning and reading recent posts, but It is Infant Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK. And while it’s true that I’m not British, I still like to be aware of mental health-related events and observances around the world.
So, here’s the main scoop: Infant Mental Health Awareness runs every June, and it gives us an opportunity to help raise awareness for a very important part of early childhood development. This year, they are running with a very memorable theme – 20:20 Vision Seeing the world through babies’ eyes. As stated at parentinfantfoundation.org.uk, this theme encourages us to think about the experiences that babies go through and how these experiences influence their mental health and development.
There is a schedule of key topics to visit during each day of IMHAW, which can be found here:
- Monday, June 8: What is Infant Mental Health and why does it matter?
- Tuesday, June 9: The First 1001 Days Movement – working together to drive change.
- Wednesday, June 10: Babies in the pandemic. What has it been like to be a baby during the COVID-19 crisis? How has it affected them?
- Thursday, June 11: Seeing the world through babies’ eyes.
- Friday, June 12: Beyond IMHAW – Our commitments for the future.
It’s a very worthy cause and while we do observe Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day each year on May here in the US, maybe we can spread the word and bring IMHAW to the US on a large scale in the coming years.
If you’re interested in learning more, check it out here.