Dr Margot Sunderland Live Legacy Interview

About Dr Margot Sunderland

For more than three decades, Margot has been a leading figure in child psychotherapy and mental health in the UK and internationally. She is Co-Director of Trauma Informed Schools UK and Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health. As one of the Founding Directors of The Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education, she has trained thousands of practitioners in integrative, arts-based approaches to therapeutic work with children, young people and adults.

Despite significant opposition from traditional training institutions and professional bodies, Margot has shown remarkable courage and perseverance in creating innovative approaches that have since gained wide recognition, ultimately expanding the field’s capacity to help troubled children and young people.

Her approach emphasises the importance of communicating painful life experience through metaphor, image and play as a clinical ‘language’, creating tools to help therapists introduce it into their therapeutic work. As a clinician and educator she makes use of the Arts alongside Attachment Theory, traditional psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches, emotion focused therapy, The Power Threat Meaning Framework (BPS) and neuroscience research. This integrative approach has been a hallmark of her career, with her trainings and publications which she says has played a pivotal role in, “shifting the field toward an approach that embraces the profound wisdom of the right brain in both therapist and client”.

She has devoted a significant portion of her career to developing trauma-informed approaches for working with children, creating internationally recognised therapeutic tools for children in residential care while establishing trauma-informed educational practices now implemented in over 5,000 schools.

Perhaps one of Margot’s most important contributions has been her ability to bridge multiple perspectives for the clinical and non-clinically trained audience. She is author of more than twenty books on child mental health, which collectively have been translated into eighteen languages and published in twenty-four countries. Her exceptional ability to translate complex neuroscientific research into accessible, practical guidance is evident in her award-winning book, “What Every Parent Needs to Know.” The book won First Prize in the British Medical Association Medical Book Awards, and it draws on over 700 scientific studies in child development and parent-child interaction.

Most recently, her film ‘What Every Teenager Needs to Know About Emotions, Relationships and Mental Health’ represents her vision for transforming how mental health is addressed with young people, moving beyond symptom management to genuine healing.

Event Highlights:

This Legacy Interview offers an opportunity to hear directly from one of the field’s most respected voices in child psychotherapy and neuroscience-informed practice.

• Discover Margot’s personal journey from performing arts to pioneering integrative arts psychotherapy, and how she developed her innovative approach to working with children’s emotions through multiple creative modalities.
• Explore practical applications of neuroscience in therapeutic work with children, young people and families, including evidence-based approaches to addressing emotional pain and transforming trauma.
• Learn about the therapeutic tools and resources Margot has developed for therapists. These include her ‘Helping Children with Feelings’ series and Emotions Cards which has helped practitioners and parents work with children to name and explore their difficulties.
• Gain insights into her transformative work in thousands of schools, where teachers are being trained to understand attachment and trauma and develop skills in empathic active listening to reduce referrals to mental health services.
• Understand her ground-breaking work with adolescents through her book ‘Conversations that Matter,’ which provides practical guidance to parents and therapists on how to have meaningful conversations about difficult subjects without fear getting in the way.
• Experience her innovative practical neuroscience-based applications, including sand play therapy and the powerful “Big Empathy Drawing” technique for trauma.
• Discover the power of therapeutic storytelling in her practice model, exemplified in works like ‘The Day the Sea Went Out and Never Came Back’ which addresses grief and loss. Her therapeutic stories, accompanied by practical handbooks, provide accessible ways to work through core affects, including anger, fear, and grief.
• Appreciate her flexible, child-centred approach that offers multiple therapeutic pathways tailored to each child’s specific clinical and developmental need incorporating the seven distinct art forms within therapeutic practice.

Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner, a student in training, or an educator interested in therapeutic approaches for children and young people, this Legacy Interview provides an opportunity to learn from Margot’s decades of experience and innovative thinking. Her integration of creative arts, psychotherapy, and neuroscience offers valuable perspectives that can enrich practice across different therapeutic disciplines.

Special Guests

Professor Brett Kahr – Leading Authority on Psychoanalysis and Mental Health

Professor Brett Kahr, Psychoanalyst and author, is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London. He also serves as the Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London and is an Honorary Fellow of the museum, as well as the Series Editor of the ‘Freud Museum London Series’ of books on the history of psychoanalysis.

A prolific author and editor, Brett has written twenty-two books and served as series editor for over eighty-five additional titles. His recent works include ‘Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel,’ ‘Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis,’ and ‘Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis: From Freud’s Death Bed to Laing’s Missing Tooth.’

Brett is Chair of the Scholars Committee and the Scholars Network of the British Psychoanalytic Council. In 2024, he received the British Psychoanalytic Council’s ‘Outstanding Professional Leadership Award’ and is an Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy.

Brett has been a key collaborator of Margot Sunderland for over three decades, having first met her in 1988. He played a pivotal role in the founding of the Centre for Child Mental Health (CCMH), and in 2004, Brett became its Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health. He has lectured extensively for both the Institute of Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE) and the CCMH, organisations founded and directed by Margot.

Their professional relationship represents a productive alliance between established psychoanalytic traditions and innovative, neuroscience-informed approaches to mental health, particularly benefitting the advancement of child and adolescent psychotherapy in the UK.

Brett Kahr says: “Few mental health practitioners in the United Kingdom have enhanced the profession as much as Dr. Margot Sunderland has done. A woman of great inspiration, she has expanded the field of child and adolescent mental health as well as the field of the creative arts therapies more than anyone else in recent decades. Our community owes her much gratitude for having trained and supported so many hundreds of new colleagues.”

Dan Hughes – Pioneer of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy

Dan Hughes is an internationally renowned clinical psychologist who developed Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), an innovative approach for working with children who have experienced trauma, abuse and neglect.

His therapeutic model integrates attachment theory, neurobiology and intersubjectivity, providing a framework for supporting troubled children, of particular benefit to children from the care system and their carers. The approach is centred around what Dan calls “PACE” – Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy – qualities that help co-regulate trauma and construct new meanings of difficult experiences.

Dan has been a key figure in Margot Sunderland’s educational initiatives, serving as one of her principal child psychotherapy tutors. Their collaboration represents an important bridge between attachment-focused therapy and neuroscience-informed approaches. Dan’s DDP methodology complements Margot’s integration of arts and neuroscience in therapeutic interventions, particularly in their work with looked-after children and those who have experienced developmental trauma.

Developed in the 1980s and continuously refined since, DDP has become influential worldwide, particularly for supporting children in foster care and adoptive families. Dan observed that traditional therapeutic approaches often failed with these children, prompting him to create an attachment-focused alternative that emphasises creating safe, emotionally connected relationships.

Through his books, including the seminal ‘Building the Bonds of Attachment’ and ‘Attachment-Focused Family Therapy Workbook’, and his extensive training programmes, Dan has significantly influenced how therapists approach work with traumatised children. He has become an important theorist and inspiring practitioner who demonstrates the healing potential of genuine human connection.

Dan Hughes says, “Margot has done so much for the field—in child mental health, neuropsychology, inspiring therapeutic books for children and parents, training and teaching professionals in mental health and education. She is a mentor and friend to many—a treasured gift to us all.”

Dr Lynette Rentoul – Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Dr Lynette Rentoul is a clinical psychologist and adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist and former lecturer in Psychology at Kings College London. Her clinical work has been with both adults, at the Cassell Hospital in London and children and adolescents in a variety of NHS in-patient and community settings. She has combined her interest in psychoanalysis, child development, developmental psychopathology, attachment theory, and affective neuroscience in her work for over 30 years in these clinical settings.

She worked in New York City, supporting the mental health response to children and their families impacted by the terrorist attack in September 2001, providing oversight of training and service delivery to thousands of children and young people. She also worked in Iran, supervising mental health staff, who provided much-needed crisis mental health support to children and families impacted by the Bam earthquake.

She was a member of the Department of Health Working Party and the British Psychological Society Expert Group developing guidelines for disaster response planning for children and young people.

Her most recent project was the roll out of an ambitious training programme to support Early Help staff understand and attend to the needs of children, young people and their families and stem the increase of children whose mental health needs reach crisis levels before they are attended to.

Dr Lynette Rentoul says, “Margot’s work has shaped my understanding of attachment, developmental psychopathology, and neuroscience through her insights on brain-mind systems affecting children’s emotional and prosocial development, including their capacity for learning and peer relationships. Her ability to make affective neuroscience and attachment theory accessible through the Trauma Informed Schools (TIS) training is both impressive and vital. Children who experienced early trauma often struggle at school, risking exclusion. TIS training embeds relational approaches, helping staff provide understanding and effective support in trauma-informed ways.”

About MINDinMIND

What makes MINDinMIND events unique is our distinctive approach to bringing you insightful conversations with renowned clinicians and thought leaders in mental health. As former journalists turned psychotherapists, we draw on our skills in deep listening and storytelling to connect the threads of personal and professional experiences that have shaped our guests’ work and their clinical legacies, preserving their wisdom for current and future generations of mental health professionals.

The event will be hosted by Jane O’Rourke.

Jane is a Psychodynamic Child, Adolescent and Family Psychotherapist and former award-winning BBC Producer, and founder of MINDinMIND. She creates rich, multi-layered conversations through carefully crafted live interviews with luminaries such as Arietta Slade, Anne Alvarez, Alicia Lieberman, Beatrice Beebe, Patrick Casement, and Miriam Steele. MINDinMIND’s in-depth approach helps to create a special feel to our live events, producing original, thoughtful and at times deeply moving conversations with our visionary legacy interviewees. We deepen these conversations with the inclusion of special guests chosen by our interviewees for the support or inspiration they have offered over their careers, creating a rich, multi-faceted exploration of their work and ideas—bringing to life not just the clinical work but the person behind it as well.

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