Mothering from the Inside Out: Results of a community‐based randomized efficacy trial testing a mentalization‐based parenting intervention for mothers with addictions

Nancy Suchman and the colleagues she influenced have produced ground‐breaking and attitude‐challenging work in understanding how parenting and substance use come together. Dr Suchman and her colleagues make the claim that there is nothing about a substance‐use disorder that precludes effective and sensitive caring for children especially with interventions that focus on the parent–child relationship. Suchman's legacy is to highlight how substance use as an illness pulls individuals away from important, caring relationships and limits their giving themselves to those relationships. Restoring the salience of caring relationships and of the individual's ability to care may be as impactful on their substance use as a strict focus on the reduction of drug use and achieving abstinence.

Section: Key Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This more empathic, attachment‐informed view of substance use and parenting comes through in the integrative intervention approach to working with substance‐using parents described in this issue including the papers by Lowell, DeCoste et al. (2023) and Lowell, Suchman et al. (2023).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reframing caring for parents who struggle with substance‐use disorders

Mayes

2023

“…In the intervention science section , Amanda Lowell, Cindy DeCoste & their colleagues (2023) present the findings from Nancy's final intervention study, finding that MIO prevents deterioration in some key parenting outcomes more effectively than a parent education control, but that the impact is not nearly as robust when delivered by addiction counselors as when delivered by research‐based therapists. Next, Elizabeth Peacock‐Chambers and her associates (2023) discuss some of their conclusions regarding clinical training of Mothering from the Inside Out based on a case study of such training.…”

Section: Overview Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing parental reflective functioning: A special tribute to the life and work of Nancy E. Suchman, PhD

Borelli

DeCoste

McMahon

2023

Self Cite

Nancy E. Suchman's contributions to the fields of infant mental health, maternal reflective functioning, and attachment‐based intervention will have long‐lasting impacts. In particular, through the development and dissemination of her intervention program, Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO), she innovated a way of working with mothers with substance use disorders that represented a paradigm shift within the field of addiction. In this introduction to the special issue, written to honor her life and work, we review Nancy's background and briefly describe her academic accomplishments. The special issue contains nine qualitative and quantitative research reports written by Nancy's colleagues and their collaborators. All nine papers pertain to the theme of understanding, measuring, and promoting parents’ capacity for reflective functioning. Four provide findings that advance our understanding of parental reflective functioning. The other five highlight insights from continuing evaluations of MIO, including new adaptations of the model. To introduce the special issue, we provide an overview of the scope of the work done within these projects. Finally, the special issue concludes with two commentaries contributed by Linda Mayes and Arietta Slade, leading scholars within the field who were also Nancy's close colleagues. Both provide insight into Nancy's impact on the field.

“…MIO also seemed to protect mothers with higher addiction severity such that the intervention was associated with the potential to be more reflective, whereas the psychoeducational intervention was associated with lower mentalizing and less reciprocal interactions in parents with the most severe addiction profiles. With these critical outcomes, MIO quickly became the “go to” model for providing parenting support to caregivers struggling with drug addiction (Lowell, DeCoste et al., 2023).…”

Section: Mothering From the Inside Outmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lowell and her colleagues’ paper (Lowell, DeCoste et al., 2023) describe the outcomes of the RCT aimed at testing the efficacy of MIO (vs. a psychoeducational intervention [PE]) when administered by addiction counselors. The results were promising.…”

Section: Taking Mio To Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing a mentalizing framework to understanding mothers with addiction: The groundbreaking work of Nancy E. Suchman

Slade¹

2023

Nancy Suchman is remembered as a pioneer whose mentalization‐based intervention—Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO)—transformed the treatment of parents struggling with substance use disorders. Specifically, Suchman's work highlighted the neural mechanisms underlying substance use disorders and identified the promotion of parental mentalizing as a key therapeutic focus in enhancing early parent‐child relationships. Her work transformed parenting support models for this population of parents. Several randomized controlled trials (RCT) show the effectiveness of MIO in promoting parental reflective functioning (PRF) and positive relational outcomes in parents with substance use disorders and their children. Suchman's MIO model has since been extended to parenting in many contexts. She is also remembered as a generous colleague, a gifted researcher and clinician, and an inspiration to generations of researchers and practitioners working with parents who aspire to raise healthy, secure children despite multiple challenges and adversities. This special issue compiles the work of researchers inspired by Suchman as they carry on her legacy in examining aspects of parental mentalization. Collectively, the research presented yields confirmation of MIO core assumptions, offers new insights into roles of positive sentiment and savoring in mentalization processes, and presents evaluations of MIO in multiple contexts and with new adaptations.