A Critical Link: Interventions for physical growth and psychological development

This review documents the critical relationship between nutritional status and psychological development and demonstrates the potential of combining interventions that enhance early childhood development and those that improve child health and nutrition into an integrated model of care.  It summarizes three types of interventions:

• Interventions (psychosocial or nutrition) to support psychological development.

• Nutrition interventions to support physical growth.

• Combined interventions to improve both growth and psychological development. 

The review also identified a number of conditions, such as children’s ages and programme characteristics, under which the impact on growth and development is most likely to be seen.