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As in psychotherapy with adult clients, cognitive therapy has proven to be effective in working with children and adolescents, for example in treating depression. Its main objective is to change negative thoughts for more adaptive ones.
Usually the therapeutic procedure is carried out from the following sequence:
As in the case of therapy with adults, to address these objectives in cognitive therapy with children and adolescents, we usually intervene through the use of worksheets and self-records. For this reason, the format and presentation of the worksheets and records is adapted to the developmental level of the child and his personal interests..
The greatest exponent of work with children and adolescents since PCP is Tom Ravanette (1999), who has worked and researched especially in the field of educational psychology. When George A. Kelly (1955) developed PCP, he started from the philosophical postulate according to which the meaning of experience is a personal construction and is not revealed to us directly by simply observing external reality. In this way, new interpretations of the experience are always possible. Following these premises, the main objectives of working with children and adolescents from PCP would be the following:
These objectives are pursued by exploring different aspects of the child's life:
Techniques designed to address therapeutic goals are invitations for the child to think about himself and his way of giving meaning to life; They are characterized by having a minimal structure and encouraging maximum freedom of expression. In addition, each exercise contains the possibility of generating new construction alternatives.
From narrative psychotherapy, narrative is considered as the central element in the construction of knowledge. That is, we organize knowledge about ourselves and what we live in stories or narratives. Since there is always more than one way to explain one's story, narrative psychotherapy has two main goals:
But how do you conduct an outsourcing conversation? Here are some useful types of intervention to outsource the problem:
Relative influence questions (White, 1986): they are useful for the child not to identify with the problem and feel that he has or may have some control over it.
Invitational Questions: they are useful to generate experience of preferred relationships with the problem, not only to obtain information:
Use of metaphor: it is useful to describe the relationship between one person (or more) and a problem. Thus, we can talk, for example, about the wall of rage, turn our backs on the problem, tame it, destroy it, throw it away, etc. The metaphor changes as the relationship to the problem changes. It is chosen with the client, using their own language; meaning is always negotiated.
We can also personify the problem to be able to negotiate: for example, ask the child to give it a name, draw it, write letters, etc..
Freeman, J., Epston, D., and Lobovits, D. (1997). Narrative therapy for children. Barcelona: Paidós, 2001.
Ezpeleta, L. (2001). The diagnostic interview with children and adolescents. Madrid: Ed. Synthesis (Technical Guides Series).
Mendez, FX (2000). Fears and Fears in Childhood: Helping Children Overcome Them (2nd Ed.). Madrid: Pyramid.
Mendez, FX (2001). The child who does not smile: Strategies to overcome childhood sadness and depression (2nd. Ed.). Madrid: Pyramid.
Pacheco, M. and Botella, L. (2001). Relational constructivism in psychotherapy with children and adolescents: a proposal for the liberation of new dialogic spaces. Journal of Psychotherapy, 44, 5-26.
White, M., and Epston, D. (1993). Narrative means for therapeutic purposes. Barcelona: Paidós.
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