An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa

Mafela, Sedzani

An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa

Thesis / Dissertation

2023

Abstract

Infant Mental Health (IMH) is a concept developed by psychologists, psychiatrists, child development specialists, to describe preverbal children's emotional well-being. In everyday life, however, people may not be familiar with this idea, use these terms or think about infant well-being in the same way. The research therefore posed the general question 'do infants have mental health?' to a range of participants, including parents, grandparents, and those who haven't had children. A decolonial feminist-queer approach was used. The research revealed that although people did not think of their children's well-being using the language of IMH, they had their ways of ensuring the 'mental health' of their infants. Secondly, mental health is often understood in terms of illness and not as wellness. Lastly, although infants were not thought to have 'mental health', the participants agreed on the presence of mental health in infants and used a variety of terms to describe this concept in their own words as opposed to the formal descriptions according to IMH paradigm.

Keywords

Social Anthropology

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