Mentalization-Based Treatment for Children: a time-limited approach
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book about time-limited Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) with children. This book is the first comprehensive clinical introduction to using a time-limited, mentalizing approach for working with children, aged 5 to 12 years, who experience emotional and behavioural problems including anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties.
Mentalization-based treatment promotes a child’s ability to make sense of their own mind, and of the minds of others around them. The author group, which includes Dr Nick Midgley, Co-Director of ChapTre, alongside an international team of clinician-researchers who are pioneering the MBT model with children, explore the significance of mentalization and then devote the core chapters to the process of conducting short-term (9-12 sessions) MBT for children, including problem assessment and case formulation in terms of mentalizing techniques, the therapist's stance, and treatment termination.
The approach draws on traditional psychodynamic principles, but integrates them with findings from attachment theory, the empirical study of mentalization, and features of other evidence-based approaches. This book includes a chapter-length case illustration and an appendix that lists measures of reflective functioning in children and their parents as well as validation articles.
Dr Geoff Goodman, Associate Professor at Long Island University in New York, said of the work:
"Internationally renowned child psychotherapist Nick Midgley has assembled an all-star team of mentalization experts to help clinicians of various theoretical orientations to ‘mentalize’ the vision of compassionate child treatment… [The book] promises to become a classic treatment manual that can be applied to children with many different psychiatric diagnoses and family backgrounds."
The book has been published by the American Psychological Association (APA).