Mental Health

Head Start program staff are required to work in partnership with families to ensure they have access to any needed mental health services. This brief is designed to: (1) provide guidance for Head Start program staff to identify mental health providers who best meet a family's needs, culture, and personality, and (2) offer ideas to overcome access barriers.

"My 1st Year" and "Discovering Feelings" Books can be used by parents, caregivers and consultants. They are designed to help adults better understand a baby's development, recognize important milestones and in  helping to label a young child’s feelings.

The ideas and strategies outlined below are available in a variety of formats. They include Twitter postings ("tweets"), classroom activities, and supplemental materials that can be sent home for families to do at home.

Caregivers and parents have unique temperaments. Adult-child compatibility can affect the quality of their relationships. Use this chart to discover your traits and those of the children you work with.

Please rate yourself and your infant on the following nine traits. Check the box for each trait that comes closest to describing each of your regular behaviors. Remember, you can use the chart of Temperament Traits for definitions of each trait.

Temperament is an important feature of social and emotional health. It describes the way we approach and react to the world. It is our own personal "style" that is present from birth. There are three general types of temperaments, often referred to as easy-going, slow-to-warm, and active.

While roughly 15% of new mothers suffer from maternal depression, the rates are much higher in families with lower incomes. In fact, 52% of mothers in an Early Head Start research study reported high levels of depressive symptoms.

Head Start programs are increasingly involved in efforts to assist adult family members in gaining parenting skills that can both promote positive social-emotional development and prevent challenging behaviors. In recent years, a number of formal parenting curricula have been developed and researched. We have identified five such programs with promising effects.