Thought Pieces

Trauma can have long lasting effects on a child’s mental health and physical health. Learn more about the latest research and interventions for traumatised children in this interview with leading psychiatrist and researcher, Professor Helen Minnis.

Whether you’re a teacher, social worker or therapist, you will be aware that children can be complex, especially those who have experienced trauma or adversity. Making conscious the unconscious is one of the benefits that a psychoanalytically trained supervisor can bring to our thinking in our work with children. Deirdre Dowling, is a Child Psychotherapist and former social worker with extensive experience supervising child care professionals all over the world, explains.

Why does our culture still have such a poor appreciation of the impact of childhood experiences? Suzanne Zeedyk reflects on ways that she believes scientists can be more effective in bringing the science of attachment to the public.

The failure to pass President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ program, whilst a massive blow to the middle class and the environment, the consequences are especially dire for poor families and their children.

Children's lives have been turned upside down, but they need adults who can bear with not knowing the outcome of this pandemic.

The ‘Children of Covid’ photographic exhibition by Bex Day explores the emotional impact of the pandemic on children growing up during the lockdown.

The crucial first two years of life and why babies cannot continue to be ignored by government if we are to ‘build better’ after the pandemic.

In this Thought Piece, Adam Goren explores how an aversion to unpredictability for 8 years old Omar who has autism, sometimes triggers energetic attempts to create a hyper-ordered world. And although this can stifle spontaneity and loving exchange, Adam shows how therapy can help build trust in ‘going with the flow.’

In his work with Open Door in Haringey, North London, John Reece talks about how he and his colleagues are helping overcome the barriers to accessing mental health services for young people of colour, the trauma of racism and the impact of the transmission of violence.

During the Covid-19 pandemic Dr Catherine Mallouh, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, has been working with pregnant women and mothers. Here she describes the particular challenges this period of time has brought to women preparing or caring for a new baby.

How children can grow and learn from the Covid-19 pandemic. Psychoanalyst Neil Altman urges us to be brave about what we talk about with children; helping them avoid the blind spots adults have over issues such as racism and inequality.

After struggling to find a way to support marginalised, stigmatised and excluded children, young people and families from within the mental health system, Jay Perkins has taken his therapeutic work outside of clinics.

Child Psychotherapist Graham Music delves into the less explored area of early neglect. Here he describes the different types of neglect, how it affects the nervous system and brains, and what might be helpful to treat it.

Like most of us, Carolyn Hart has been forced to move her therapeutic practice online. What is the transference reaction that both clinicians and clients have to technology that impacts on the analytic transitional space and transference relationship? And what happens to that relationship when challenged by technical glitches?

As many of us struggle to conduct our social and work life on screen, child psychotherapists have had to find ways to overcome the same challenge of virtual sessions with their young patients. In this playful blog for MINDinMIND, Adam Goren describes the role of improvisation in therapy in the struggle to form an online connection.

How to reconcile adult hypocrisy and bullying whilst preaching kindness to children? In this insightful written blog and interview, Neil Altman argues that for the most part, we adults fail to help children come to terms with what they observe, because we ourselves don’t know how to integrate our own potential for violence and aggression with our kind and loving feelings.

What Do Scholarship and Practice Have in Common?

A re-examination of what is really causing it