ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the developmental contexts, psychopathologies in infancy and early childhood, and assessment and early intervention in primary health care. Premature birth can be a traumatic event for the parents, leading to long-term anxiety, depression, and PTSD reactions. They often experience the infant's birth as a sudden interruption that is too shocking and painful to think of. Similar delay in identification and intervention is also present with less severe mental retardation, due to parents’ uncertainty about “what is normal” and the poor validity and reliability of IQ tests for infancy. In routine practice, primary care practitioners can provide help through the various ports of the entry. Nevertheless, a common language is urgently needed because of the growing knowledge of early psychopathologies, the rapidly increasing use of psychopharmacological treatments among young children, and the methodological needs in the epidemiology.
