Salud mental, función docente y mentalización en la educación preescolar

This is a theoretical paper, its aim is to present a literature review on the importance of health promotion and prevention in mental health from the point of view of early interventions, which promote children socio emotional development in educational contexts. We stress that there is a vacuum in addressing teachers psychological aspects. First, we present the aims of educative pre-school programs and the place teachers emotional competence have in them. Subsequently, we introduce mentalization concept and its relation with socio emotional development and mental health. We also illustrate some programs which have been designed to promote mentalization in school as well as non-school contexts. Finally, we present some ideas about preschool teachers' training programs and interventions that promote mentalization capacity. We demonstrate the relation between the promotion of socio-emotional development in the teachers and the positive incidence in mental health of the children with whom they work.