The Emotional Journey through Pregnancy, Labor, and Birth course is offered through the Infant-Parent Training Institute (IPTI) at the Center for Early Relationship Support of JF&CS. In addition to this course, IPTI offers a One- and Two-Year Infant Mental Health Fellowship, Infant Observation Seminar, monthly seminars, other short courses, Master Classes, and a peer study group.
Course Description
For women who choose to bear children, their journey through pregnancy, labor, and birth is a biopsychosocial process that will occupy almost a year of their lives. They are embarking on a developmental trajectory that will propel them into reflection on the past, anticipation of the future, new learning, physical challenge, identity shifts, and a rearrangement of their social status. Old issues, both unprocessed as well as those already thought to have been processed, will surface and be revisited. New dilemmas and questions will come to the fore. This is a time ripe for personal growth.
This course will examine the biopsychosocial journey of childbearing women. Through readings, case material, and discussion, participants will explore the myriad twists and turns this journey takes for some women and the ways in which mental health professionals and others who work with pregnant women can be instrumental in facilitating a meaningful and healthy outcome.
Time, Date, and Location
The Course will meet on Friday mornings from 10:00 a.m. – noon for 6 weeks, beginning October 15, 2010.
JF&CS headquarters, 1430 Main Street, Waltham
Tuition
$475.00 Space is limited to 12 students.
CEUs for some disciplines will be available.
Faculty
Deborah Issokson, PsyD is a licensed psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health. She provides psycho¬therapy for women and their partners as well as training, supervision, and consultation to health care and mental health professionals in the area of reproductive mental health. She is co-author of chapter 21, “Postpartum,” in Our Bodies Ourselves for the New Century, 1998 and chapter 23, “The First Year of Parenting,” in Our Bodies Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era, 2005. Until its closing, she was an adjunct faculty member of the BU School of Public Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Nurse-Midwifery Education Program. She maintains a private practice, Counseling for Reproductive Health & Healing, in Wellesley and Pembroke.