Thinking about relational trauma in infancy
Presented by Professor Louise Newman AM
This webinar was presented live on Wednesday July 5th, 2023 at 4pm US Eastern time. Through the kindness of Professor Newman AM, a recording of the webinar is available here
Professor Louise Newman AM
Louise Newman AM is Professorial Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Newcastle University and Monash University. She has held senior leadership positions in mental health training and research including Director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, Director of the Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology and is Director of the Melbourne University BEAR (Building Early Attachment and Resilience) research program. She is recognised as Australia’s lead researcher in the areas of infant and early child mental health, disturbances of early parenting and parent-infant interventions. She has worked extensively in developing clinical programs for women with backgrounds of complex trauma and mental health issues needing support in the perinatal period and has over 25 years’ experience in women’s mental health. She is recognised as the leading international expert in the issues facing women with complex trauma disorder in pregnancy and the perinatal period. She is the past Director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at the Royal Women’s Hospital. She is currently Consultant Psychiatrist at the Albert Road Clinic specialising in women’s mental health and perinatal and infant mental health.
Newman’s training is in both Psychology and Psychiatry and she has extensive training in the assessment and measurement of early development and the quality of parent child relationships including attachment and emotional interaction. She was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2006 in the area of “Trauma in Infancy” which studied the challenges for mothers with complex trauma disorders and the importance of early identification of infants at developmental risk. Newman has undertaken consultation and training for the child protection and legal system nationally and internationally in this area and developed a Family Court Judicial Education Program in the area of parental trauma. She is regularly consulted in on complex trauma cases in the child protection area and is a regular keynote speaker at both legal and child sector meetings. She is recognised as an expert in the area of family violence and its impact on children and provided evidence to the Victorian Royal Commission and the National Royal Commission into the institutional response to childhood sexual abuse. She is active in advocacy around women’s rights to safety and for gender safe mental health services. She provided evidence to the Victorian Royal Commission on Mental Health Services stressing a need for women’s mental health services for complex trauma and the importance of the infant and perinatal period. She offers consultation and supervision to survivor organisations and contributed to policy development undertaken by the Blue Knot foundation.
Professor Newman has focussed on the development of mental health services with a greater emphasis on gender specific care, early intervention and prevention and integration of trauma -focussed interventions. These approaches are multidisciplinary with a focus on early identifications of vulnerability, targeted interventions in collaboration with women and their social networks which are trauma and gender focussed and integrated with communities. She has experience in the development and implementation of these models in redesign of clinical services such as the Monash Parent Infant Unit, Newcastle NSW perinatal and infant mental health services and has worked in NSW Health on policy development as advisor to the Chief Psychiatrist on Early Intervention and Child and Adolescent Mental Health. This role included State-wide development of integrated perinatal and infant mental health services focussed in improving access for women with mental health vulnerabilities. Newman has a media profile in the areas of mental health, child protection and parenting and was awarded a medal in the Order of Australia in 2011 for her contribution to child protection and mental health education.
Professor Newman has experience in working with and consulting to diverse cultural groups including asylum seeker and refugee populations. She was Chair of the Detention Health Advisory Group providing advice to the Commonwealth Department of Immigration on the health and mental health needs of asylum seekers (2002
-2006) and is the current Convenor of Doctors for Justice, a human rights organisation advocating for the needs of detained populations. In this role she advocates for the needs of women and children in detention and undertakes medical legal assessments.
RESEARCH
Newman has current research collaborations with several international perinatal infant research groups including the Anna Freud Centre and the Miami Family Studies group. She has considerable international teaching experience and was a World Health Organisation consult reviewing mental health services in China in 2006, and teaching approaches to mental health assessment in Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. In 2004 she was the invited Visiting Professor to the University of Osaka, Japan, providing teaching in the area of trauma.
Newman’s publications focus on developmental psychopathology and early risk factors for mental disorder, clinical intervention models and the developmental impact of parental psychopathology. (NEWMAN LK, Perry N et l (2011) The neurobiological basis of parenting disturbance, ANZJP 45(2): 109-123.
Perry N, NEWMAN LK (2015) Improving antenatal risk assessment in women exposed to high risk, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 20: 84-105)
She has co-authored the Australian text on infant mental health and authored over 400 publications, chapters and books. Her papers relating to early risk factors of mental disorder as a model of prevention are widely cited (NEWMAN LK, Judd F, Olson C, Castle D. Early origins of mental disorder – risk factors in the perinatal and infant period. BMC Psych. (2016) 16:270282)
Professor Newman has supervised 20 PhD candidates to completion and 10 Masters and Honours students in the areas of infant mental health, child protection and law. She is an active current supervisor and mentor and teaches in the areas of infant development and assessment of socioemotional and attachment disorders. She coordinates University of Melbourne training in Perinatal and Infant Psychiatry and Psychodynamic Psychiatry for the master’s vocational training of Psychiatrists. She is trained in attachment assessment and measures of parent infant interactions and has designed a self -report measure of parental representation of the infant (Newman -Morris V, NEWMAN LK, Gray K, Simpson K et.al. (2020). Development and internal reliability and validity of a new measurement of distorted maternal representations- the Mother Infant Representation Scale. Infant Mental Health Journal 41:40-55).
She also supervises trainees in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and contributes to the Advanced Training program in Psychotherapy for the College of Psychiatrists.
RESEARCH IMPACT
Newman’s research developments have had considerable national and international impact with training being conducted across NSW and Tasmanian perinatal and infant services and international presentations to the World Association of Infant Mental Health. Newman is a member of the WAIMH research committee and has developed collaboration with groups in the Netherlands and UK. She is a member of the Meridian perinatal and Infant research group at Monash Health. The BEAR program and intervention provides a manualised evidence-based approach to supporting vulnerable caregivers and infants and is able to be adapted to a variety of communities and clinical services. Current developments have allowed access using distance technology for caregivers isolated during the pandemic and have also proved support and assessment for women in rural and regional areas with limited services. The BEAR research group has also developed a program for pregnant women experiencing trauma and vulnerability to parenting stress and difficulties. This is currently in the final stages of evaluation and has considerable potential for use in clinical practice, maternity settings and primary care
Evaluations of the BEAR model to date support the use of a trauma focussed attachment-based model to supporting women during pregnancy and the perinatal period. Women involved in both face to face and distance versions have reported reductions in parenting stress, improved understanding of their infants and greater confidence in their parenting. Clinicians have valued the integration of support and mental health interventions for women with mental health issues during a critical developmental period which aims to improve overall wellbeing and reduce the risk of postnatal mental health problems.
A recording of the webinar is available here