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IMBALANCES IN THE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT INFANT MENTAL HEALTH IN RICH AND POOR COUNTRIES: TOO LITTLE PROGRESS IN BRIDGING THE GAP
Author(s) -
Tomlinson Mark,
Bornstein Marc H.,
Marlow Marguerite,
Swartz Leslie
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
infant mental health journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1097-0355
pISSN - 0163-9641
DOI - 10.1002/imhj.21462
Subject(s) - mental health , political science , low and middle income countries , bridging (networking) , developing country , economic growth , psychology , geography , medicine , psychiatry , economics , computer network , computer science
The vast majority of infants are born in poor countries, but most of our knowledge about infants and children has emerged from high‐income countries. In 2003, M. Tomlinson and L. Swartz conducted a survey of articles on infancy between 1996 and 2001 from major international journals, reporting that a meager 5% of articles emanated from parts of the world other than North America, Europe, or Australasia. In this article, we conducted a similar review of articles on infancy published between 2002 and 2012 to assess whether the status of cross‐national research has changed in the subsequent decade. Results indicate that despite slight improvements in research output from the rest of world, only 2.3% of articles published in 11 years included data from low‐ and middle‐income countries—where 90% of the world's infants live. These discrepancies are indicative of the progress still needed to bridge the so‐called 10/90 gap (S. Saxena, G. Paraje, P. Sharan, G. Karam, & R. Sadana, [Saxena, S., 2006]) in infant mental health research. Cross‐national collaboration is urgently required to ensure expansion of research production in low‐resource settings.