Child-Centered Mental Health Care Focusing on the Positives

WORCESTER, Mass, Aug. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ivy Child International (ICI), based in Worcester, Massachusetts, is the brainchild of Rose Pavlov, a Cross-Cultural Positive Child Specialist and Early Childhood Education/Human Services professor.  ICI provides quality, individualized cross-cultural positive psychological services to children, families, and communities worldwide through consultations, assessments, education, and advocacy.  Its mission is to "help children achieve their personal best by recognizing and enhancing their unique strengths and abilities while encouraging and enabling families to participate in the growth of their child."

"From a young age, I knew it was my passion to work with children.  Beginning in 1995, my work with Mother Theresa and the Sisters of Charity serving slum dwellers in India to now working in Haiti with victims of natural devastation, have reinforced my belief in the positive impact one person can have on the life of another," says Pavlov.  

In response to those beliefs, she has created her own Cross-Cultural Positive Psychological Method and is pioneering it through ICI. The method combines a culturally sensitive approach with that of Positive Psychology in its client-centered care, research, training, and education. Pavlov utilizes an understanding of cultural nuances specific to a client's background that too often are overlooked or not known.

As she explains, "Cultural competence is an essential and an ongoing developmental process.  It involves the continual acquisition of knowledge, clinically astute fine-tuning of skills, and graduated self-evaluation.  It is an aspiration to strive for.  It does not occur as a result of a one-day training or reading of a self-help book but is an evolving process that leads to discovery of one's self and the world."

In order to achieve and experience positive emotions, Pavlov formulates a positive psychological plan (PPP) for each client.  "The purpose of the PPP is to create an action-oriented plan of exercises and applications that individuals can implement in their daily lives so they have clear ownership of their progress, in addition to the monitoring and feedback provided by ICI's professionals," she states.

Positive individual traits are identified through strengths and virtues, such as the capacity for love and work, compassion, resilience, creativity, curiosity, integrity, self knowledge, and self control, thereby broadening and enhancing a child's overall well-being. 

Pavlov has been inspired by the work of  Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, who states, "The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side; it has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological height."

Depression is 10 times greater today than in 1960 and the average age for depression today is 14.5 as compared to 29.5 in 1960. So, current mental health statistics speak to a critical need for a different approach by psychological service providers.  To support this, Pavlov cites the findings of Dr. Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, presented at a meeting on preventing depression sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. "He revealed that the 'use of positive psychology techniques halved the rate of depression in three studies of young adults and children that included as much as 10 years of follow-up'."

As such, Pavlov's work is well founded and relevant for today's youth who are battling a range of issues.  She looks at the whole child and helps build healthy habits to last a lifetime. Also, ICI serves as a gateway for children and their families to a professional network of experts in nutrition, exercise, alternative medicine, music/art therapy, etc.  Though Ivy Child International is based in Worcester, Massachusetts, it is poised to expand virtual access to services to a worldwide audience. For further information, call 508-299-7905 or log on to www.ivychild.org.

Contact: Ivy Child International team, 508-299-7905, [email protected]

SOURCE Ivy Child International