Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Attachment difficulties in infants and children have been linked with mental health problems across all stages of life. However, our health care system does not currently have a cost-effective way to screen for or treat attachment difficulties in infants and children. One way to screen for early attachment difficulties may be to examine the way that infants and children cope with a painful event, such as an immunization. Parents and infants were previously videotaped during infant immunization appointments at 2, 4, 6, and 12 months of age. The present study will ask these parents and children to be videotaped again during their preschool immunization appointments at 4 to 5 years of age. These videotapes will be coded for infant and preschool pain behaviours following the immunization. Parents and children will also be asked to come to a university laboratory to be videotaped during a series of tasks, in order to examine the attachment relationship between the child and the parent. The proposed study will help us understand how infant and preschool pain behaviours following an immunization are related to preschool attachment. It is hoped that the findings from this study will help provide a viable method for primary health care professionals to screen for early attachment difficulties. Early detection by primary health care professionals would facilitate referrals for early prevention and mental health treatment and thus improve mental health for these children and the adults they will become.