“What support would you find helpful?” The relationship between treatment expectations, therapeutic engagement, and clinical outcomes in parent–infant psychotherapy
Ransley, R, Sleed, M, Baradon, T, Fonagy, P. Infant Ment Health J. 2019; 1‐ 14. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21787
The aim of many psychodynamically-oriented infant therapies such as Parent Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) is to help improve parental reflective functioning and thereby improve parental capacity to sensitively respond to their children’s needs. This study analysed whether parental expectation of treatment modulated outcome and found that it did not. Instead, markers of good initial reflective capacity including the expression of concern about previous relationships and the desire to improve their future relationship with their children predicted the likelihood of success of PIP, suggesting that such therapies may be better targeted towards parents with these markers.