Les premiers liens : perspectives thérapeutiques et préventives

Perinatal psychiatry is deeply concerned with the construction, the preservation and the treatment of early parent-baby bonds. Disturbances of these first bonds are often associated with the onset of parent-baby relationship disorders and infant's development, psychosomatic or behavior troubles. Involving both fragility and psychic arousal, the perinatal period is considered as a propitious time to early interventions. Working with first parent-baby bonds includes both prevention and care. Since the first moments of life, the newborn's and the parents' competencies meet each other and become gradually tuned in the spiral of interactions. On the quality of these first daily interactions depend not only the infant's development, but also the evolution of the parenthood process and the nature of the bond between the child and his parents. Based on the experience of preventive and therapeutic work carried out in France and in Brazil, in this article we emphasize the importance of clinical work and research on the strategies of early intervention aiming at enhancing the first parent-baby bonds.