Child and adolescent psychotherapy research: Clinical applications

There have been two recent reviews of psychoanalytic psychotherapy research with children and adolescents. The first "systematic" review focused on effectiveness studies. The second review of child psychotherapy research looked more broadly at a wider range of psychoanalytically informed research. This chapter focuses on the clinical applications of psychoanalytic psychotherapy research with children and adolescents and draws from the findings of the recent reviews. Some research projects have examined the efficacy of child psychotherapy for children within the care system, or for girls who have experienced sexual abuse. Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy appears to have had a preferential impact on the PTSD scale dimensions of re-experience of traumatic event and persistent avoidance of stimuli compared to group treatment. The researchers planed the study on the basis of preliminary evidence that psychodynamic psychotherapy might be an effective treatment for depressed children and young adolescents as well as the awareness of the importance of family and contextual factors in the aetiology of depression.