[Support for families with a parent diagnosed with cancer and children under the age of five--delineation of a counselling concept]. / Unterstützung von Familien mit einem an Krebs erkrankten Elternteil und Kindern unter fünf Jahren--Darstellung eines Beratungskonzeptes.

Parents of infants and young children, who have been diagnosed with cancer wish to protect their child from the emotional strains of their illness. They wonder, what the child can understand about the illness and how it is able to process or assimilate the experience of the illness. In fact, infants and young children are particularly sensitive to the degree of emotional burden and the mental state of their parents and will experience varying degrees of insecurity due to even small changes in their relationship with their parents. On the basis of psychological development parameters specific to this age group as well as scientific findings on risk and protection factors an integrated interaction based counseling approach was developed. Within this approach, support for the communication between parent and child in view of the specific strains of their illness, both non-verbal and in the child's early stages of verbal communication, is central. In the present article the counselling concept is described and illustrated by case studies. Application and limits are discussed.

[Diagnostic classification of mental disorders in infants and toddlers age 0 to 5]. / Diagnostik und Klassifikation von Verhaltensauffälligkeiten bei Säuglingen und Kleinkindern von 0-5 Jahren.

The Article is working on developmental psychopathology, diagnosis, and treatment of behavioral problems in infants and toddlers age 0 to 5. An overview of the literature about the international discussion is given. In particular diagnostic classification is elaborated by mentioning the revision of "Diagnostic Classification 0-3 (DC: 0-3R)" and "Research Diagnostic Criteria-Preschool Age (RDC-PA)". State of the art and clinical implication is reported on the basis of principal considerations on infant psychiatry. The american practice parameters become adapted and a working title for diagnostic formulation is given. More research should be done against the background of the introduced standards.

Emotional availability in infant psychiatry.

In a child psychiatric population, 68 mother-child pairs were observed, with children ranging in age from 6 weeks to 3 years 10 months. The children were diagnosed using the Zero to Three DC 0-3 guidelines (Zero-to-Three, 1998). Each dyad also was rated in terms of the intensity of recommended therapeutic measures upon intake at our clinic. Following videotaping of parent-child interactions, the dyads were rated for emotional availability using the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS; Biringen, Robinson, & Emde, 1998). The group with feeding disorders showed the lowest EAS ratings. The group with regulation disorders (sleeping and crying disorders) had the highest ratings followed by the group with externalizing disorders (motor disorganized and/or aggressive behavior) and attachment disorders. Further, the lower the EAS ratings, the higher the intensity of recommended treatments for the family. These findings indicate the importance of standardized observing of parent-child interactions in infant psychiatric disorders. Some clinical impressions regarding the work with the EAS also are described.