Jen Bromham

Personal description:

Prior to my Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PPIP) training, I worked as an Art Psychotherapist and was Lead Art Psychotherapist for Oxford Health NHS CAMHS teams from 2005-2018. It was during my work in CAMHS that I came to understand more deeply the importance of psychoanalytic work for the healthy emotional and psychological development of young children. And it is my belief that if distressed parents and their infants can receive psychoanalytic treatments early enough they will benefit from it later in life..

Clinical Description:
I trained at the Anna Freud Centre 2015-2017 as a Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapist. During my training I worked clinically with PPIP cases at both the Anna Freud Centre and at the Loreto Drawn Together Parent-Infant and Under-Fives Therapy Service in Hertfordshire. I have continued to practice as a PPIP therapist in Hertfordshire since the completion of my training. This work is undertaken in collaboration with a local Health Visiting Team and an inspired nursery school. To support my work I am part of a network of professionals who work within early years interventions in the Harpenden and surrounding areas within Hertfordshire.

Currently I offer PPIP sessions to referred mothers and their infants and also to mothers, fathers and their infants. Referrals include the following presenting difficulties:

Maternal Postnatal Depression

Depression & Anxiety (long standing parental mental health issues)

Premature birth and subsequent developmental difficulties

Neonatal and perinatal death and the impact on parents

Infantile developmental delay/rare infantile disorders

Infantile sleep problems

Infantile feeding problems

Parents who had themselves been adopted - and the impact of their adoption on their parenting of their infants

Paternal mental health issues

While PPIP treatments are mostly once weekly they are underpinned by Psychoanalytic thinking where working with the unconscious material as presented by a parent-infant couple or triad within the analytic setting is at the heart of the work. Working in this way can enable the infant’s bodily gestures and vocalisations to be understood as meaningful communications as they can convey to the state of mind of the infant.

PPIP treatments are offered initially for four months followed by a review of progress and PPIP interventions can last up to a year.