HealthCity: Prof. Paris on Project BRIGHT’s Effect on Newborn Parents with Substance Use Disorders
Parenting a newborn can be demanding and stressful for any parent, but mothers and fathers with substance use disorders (SUD) face challenges others don’t. However, stigmatization, shame, guilt, and fear of losing their child can deter parents with SUD from getting help. Prof. Ruth Paris spoke to HealthCity to discuss how parent intervention like the kind created by Project BRIGHT (Building Resilience Through Intervention: Growing Healthier Together) focuses on fostering the parent-child relationship and can lead to healthier parents, children, and parent-child relationships.
Excerpt from, “Can Parenting Interventions Help Mothers with OUD and Their Babies?” by Caitlin White
With Project BRIGHT, once a baby is born, a clinician is with the mother in the hospital, visiting. And when the mom goes home or to a residential treatment program, the clinician continues to work with the mother and the baby as a dyad.
A lot of the parenting intervention promotes pleasure and play with the mother and child. With a 2-year-old, Paris says, it might be playing together on the floor with toys or blocks and having the mom notice how her child attunes to her. With a 1-month-old, a place to start is to have a mother recognize the baby’s smile. It’s having the clinician ask questions like, ‘Look at your baby look at you. What do you think they’re thinking about in this moment.’ And it’s not just during playtimes. In those 3 a.m. crying, stressful times, a mother is guided to ask, ‘What is happening with the baby? What do you think the baby’s feeling?’
For moms who have a long history of addiction, brain science has shown that they have a harder time registering the emotions of an infant in the same way as a mother without SUD can.
‘This is another human being who has ideas and thoughts and feelings. And they’re obviously in a very nascent state at 1, 2, and 3 months, but [the intervention] is about beginning to think, “who is this child? What do they need? And what’s the best way to provide that for them?’” Paris explains.”