Speaker Type: Mental Health in the NICU Lecture Pack 2018
Country: US
Biography:
Kara Wahlin is a licensed marriage and family therapist and art therapist who resides in the Coachella Valley of southern California. After going through the preterm birth of her twin sons William and Elliott, and the subsequent loss of William, Kara made the promise to dedicate her clinical work to helping other families coping with the trauma and loss often wrought by the NICU experience. She developed the website NICU Healing in order to provide free information, couples and individual therapy, and online support to NICU families. Kara uses strengths-based, neuroloscientifically-informed and creative practices to empower her clients to picking up the pieces of their lives and moving forward with their new life stories. She speaks frequently at conferences discussing best clinical practices, and writes for her own as well as other blogs about new ways of coping with mental health issues that come up after traumatic experiences. In her free time, Kara and her son Elliott are art machines and expert hikers, and also spend their time at home with their menagerie of small animals.
Evidence has shown that attachment between a primary caregiver and their preterm infant can change the neurodevelopmental outcomes for the infant later in life. Attachment can be seen as a living organism between parent/caregiver and child, and with encouraged development and growth, the attachment relationship can have profound effects, even in the context of the most difficult of circumstances and medical diagnoses. The more NICU caregivers know how to encourage attachment, the likelier a family system will need less medical/psychological intervention after discharge from the hospital.
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