I’ve spent decades in the mental health field, working closely with families during some of their most vulnerable moments. I’ve sat on the floor with toddlers who couldn’t yet speak but whose challenging behaviors were already telling the story of trauma. I’ve listened to parents grieve their own childhood wounds while trying to do better for their children.
I’ve witnessed healing, but too often, I’ve seen the cost of silence, stigma and delayed care.
When we talk about mental health, we often picture adolescence or adulthood. Rarely do we talk about infant mental health or the emotional well-being of babies and toddlers and their earliest relationships. A baby’s mental health is deeply tied to their caregiver’s. That’s why the path to healing must support both maternal and infant and early childhood mental health, together.
My professional path began when I was a young therapist working with families in crisis. I quickly saw even the youngest children carry deep emotional burdens. I was struck by how often a baby’s distress was misunderstood, not because parents didn’t care, but because they didn’t know how to interpret what they were seeing, and systems didn’t know how to help. I’ve been drawn to this work ever since.
In those first few years of life, a child’s brain is developing faster than at any other time. That development is shaped not only by nutrition and sleep, but by relationships. Infants and young children learn who they are and whether the world is safe through the adults who care for them.
When those relationships are safe, responsive, and loving, children’s brains are wired for connection, curiosity and resilience. But when those relationships are disrupted by trauma, poverty, violence or untreated mental health challenges, the brain adapts differently. It prepares for survival, not exploration.
These early adaptations shape everything: how children learn, how they calm themselves when upset, how they build trust with others and how they eventually contribute to their communities. If we want to address today’s mental health crisis, we must start in the earliest years.
While babies and young children can’t use words to tell us what’s wrong, they communicate with great clarity through their behavior.
Those of us trained to work with this population learn to observe closely and interpret signals including averted gazes, irritability in specific contexts, or aggression that suggests a fight-or-flight response. We notice when joyful back-and-forth interactions between a baby and caregiver break down. One of the joys of this work is helping parents understand and respond to their child’s signals to bring a relationship back into harmony.
I often think of a mother and her toddler son I worked with as they navigated the aftermath of domestic violence. He clung to her, cried constantly and refused to nap. She was exhausted, overwhelmed by shame and convinced she was a “bad mom.” On top of the trauma they had both experienced, she was also struggling with depression. But they weren’t broken, they were scared. And they were doing the best they could without the support they needed.
Through dyadic therapy, a form of care that focuses on the mental health of the parent-child relationship, they began to heal together. She found space to process her own trauma, while learning to see his behaviors as his way of telling her how distressed he was. What changed wasn’t just the child, it was the connection between them. Their relationship became the pathway to recovery for them both.
These stories are far too common and too often invisible. Infant and early childhood mental health exists in the space between child development and adult psychology. And because it doesn’t fall neatly into a system, it’s often left out entirely. As a result, countless families go without the support they need, even as signs of distress in children such as tantrums, withdrawal or feeding difficulties mount.
But here’s the hopeful part: early intervention works. Research shows that supporting mental health during the perinatal period and early childhood can dramatically reduce future mental health problems, improve school outcomes, strengthen families, and lower long-term health systems costs. It’s not just compassionate. It’s smart policy.
At Perigee Fund, where I serve as founder, we are dedicated to advancing maternal and infant mental health, especially in communities historically underserved. We believe that investing in early relationships is one of the most powerful ways we can build a healthier, more resilient future.
More people are recognizing that trauma, especially early trauma, sits at the root of many of our deepest societal wounds: community violence, school failure, substance use and disconnection. These are not isolated problems. Every child who learns the world is not safe carries that lesson forward, often unconsciously. It shapes how they move through schools, workplaces, relationships, and communities.
If we are serious about healing these harms, we must begin where they begin: in the very first moments of life. Every time we help a baby feel safe, every time we strengthen the bond between a parent and child, we are doing more than helping a single family. We are repairing the social fabric. Healing early trauma is not a peripheral concern. It is central to building the kind of compassionate, resilient society we all want to live in.
In Washington, we’ve made progress. Programs including Medicaid’s extension of postpartum coverage and community-based parent-infant therapies are gaining traction. But we need to go further. Sustained investment in early relational health, expanded training for pediatricians, therapists and home visitors, and integration of infant and maternal mental health services into primary care and behavioral health systems are all critical.
We must also remove financial and cultural barriers to care, and normalize conversations around postpartum depression, infant mental health and the power of early relationships — whether in homes, clinics, workplaces or the halls of government. When we invest early, we reduce the need for costly interventions later in childhood, support family well-being, and ease long-term strain on schools, health care systems and communities.
Achieving these goals is now even more urgent. With the passage and signing of H.R. 1, Congress and the president have enacted cuts that will significantly reduce access to the services and supports families need to nurture infant and early childhood mental health. These changes threaten to reverse progress and widen disparities for families already struggling to access care.
Babies don’t have voices in public debates. But their well-being is inseparable from the well-being of their parents. When we invest in maternal and infant mental health, we aren’t just caring for individual families, we are shaping the foundation of our collective future.
Let’s talk about infant and early childhood mental health. Let’s invest in it. And let’s ensure that the mental health system begins at the very beginning.
Lisa Mennet, Ph.D., is a family therapist and the founder of Perigee Fund, a philanthropy dedicated to advancing maternal and infant mental health, especially in communities that have been historically underserved.