In this talk, Dr Swanepoel speaks about how evolutionary principles can help us understand difficult parent-child interactions. She covers concepts such as ‘parent-offspring conflict’, ‘evolutionary mismatch’ and ‘attachment theory’ to explain the bigger picture of how the environment impacts on parents and their children and what needs to be done to effect change for the better.
Dr Annie Swanepoel is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the EWMS LD service, which serves children with severe and profound intellectual disabilities across the whole of Essex. She has a PhD in Human Physiology and a special interest in neurodevelopment, developmental trauma and evolutionary psychiatry.