Perinatal Bonding Disorders

Toshinori Kitamura, MD, PhD, FRC Psych, is a psychiatrist. He undertook psychiatric training in Birmingham, UK, and became the first, and still only, Japanese Member (by examination) and later Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. After more than 10 years working at a national research unit in Japan, he was appointed as a Professor in Kumamoto University. He returned to Tokyo and, in 2015, with his wife Fusako, established the T. and F. Kitamura Foundation for Mental Health Studies and Skill Advancement. Having published more than 300 original papers, perinatal psychiatry is one of his main clinical and research areas.

Yukiko Ohashi, RN, PHN, CPP PhD, is a nurse, public health nurse, and child developmental psychologist (Certified Public Psychologist). She is interested in infant mental health, especially the caregiver-infant relationship and the disorders of high-risk caregivers and their children. She conducted a relationship-based intervention program for premature infants and their mothers in 2011, and manages a multi-centre community-based collaborative prevention program for expectant mothers in Japan. She is also a nurse and therapist at the Kitamura KOKORO Clinic Mental Health in Japan and a chief investigator at the Kitamura Institute of Mental Health in Japan.