Assessing Change in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Children and Adolescents

Book excerpt: This book draws together work from across Europe by leading clinical researchers who have been looking into the effectiveness of psychoanalytic interventions. They are mostly time limited, brief, non-intensive ways of working so are applicable in many settings and can therefore be generalised to other clinical teams. The populations worked with are diverse and often present mainstream services with refractory clinical problems, so an applied psychoanalytic approach is well worth trying, given the evidence presented in this volume. There is in addition an excellent theoretical chapter on the issues of such clinical research from Stephen Shirk which merits consideration by those wishing to evaluate their own work. This book is an important contribution to services for child and adolescent mental health. With increasing family distress and concerns about inadequate parenting, family breakdown and troublesome adolescents, it will help to ensure the full menu of interventions is retained in these times of financial restraint.