The Institute for Health and Recovery (IHR) is pleased to share that BRIGHT (Building Resilience Through Intervention: Growing Healthier Together) is featured in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) new publication, Healthy Starts: Postpartum OUD Care Transitions for Mother and Infant. Developed in collaboration with the Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW), BRIGHT is a dyadic intervention that supports parents in early recovery and their children in their relationships with one another. IHR and BUSSW have collaborated since 2009 to develop and refine the BRIGHT model.
The publication highlights best practices for supporting women with opioid use disorder (OUD) and their families during the critical postpartum period. As part of its discussion of comprehensive care strategies, the publication describes BRIGHT as an attachment-focused intervention that helps strengthen parenting skills, support healthy child development, and promote parental reflective functioning—the caregiver’s ability to understand and respond to their own and their child’s emotional needs.
SAMHSA notes that BRIGHT is listed as a best practice in the MCH Innovations Database and highlights the program’s focus on improving maternal mental health, parental emotion regulation and reflective capacity, parent–child relationships, children’s growth and development, and substance use disorder treatment and recovery. The publication also recognizes BRIGHT’s flexibility, with services available in professional settings, homes and communities, and through telehealth.
The publication further notes that many mothers with substance use disorders have experienced trauma and attachment complications during their own childhoods, factors that can affect parenting and increase the risk of child maltreatment. BRIGHT addresses these challenges through relationship-based interventions that strengthen caregiver–child connections and support family well-being.
To learn more about BRIGHT please contact Susan O’Donnell:
Susan O'Donnell
Director of Early Childhood Trauma Services & A BRIGHT Approach