Integrating Complexity and Infant Mental Health for Comprehensive Community Change

Abstract

Efforts emerging throughout the United States and at the federal scale suggest that there is a readiness for new perspectives on mental health and community change. Complexity and infant mental health have been developing as fresh orientations within the fields of systems theory and mental health, respectively. Through Sarasota Community Studio, residents of the Central-Cocoanut neighborhood in Florida are now combining the key principles of complexity and infant mental health and applying them to place-based efforts to develop a new model for transformative change and well-being. This paper highlights features of the current U.S. policy landscape that signal a readiness to address community transformation, identifies key principles of complexity and infant mental health that make these orientations especially relevant to transformation, presents Central-Cocoanut as a community case example of efforts to apply complexity and infant mental health, and begins to explore the implications of a new model for transformation that is emerging at the neighborhood scale.

Interactive Mapping: A Method for Engaged Community Assessment

“…This approach has also been developed in Florida through the work of Allison Pinto, Tim Dutton, and fellow residents in the Seminole Heights and West Tampa, Central-Cocoanut, and Lake Maggiore neighborhoods of Tampa, Sarasota, and St. Petersburg, respectively (Pinto, 2014). The resident-led work of Pinto and fellow residentcolleagues has combined community building, geographic information system (GIS) mapping of U.S. census data and aggregate data sets, residentgenerated data and asset mapping, walking surveys, storytelling, community convening for collective sensemaking and decision-making, and active changemaking (Sarasota Community Studio, 2013).…”

“…Virtual touring of communities has been made more accessible through Google Maps. This type of touring allows one to view a neighborhood as if in person, providing a cost-effective and quick way to observe a community's infrastructure, aesthetics, social and commercial activity, sidewalk amenities, and overall physical condition (Rundle et al, 2011). The information gathered through virtual touring can be enriched through a windshield or walking tour.…”