CPITT Therapy

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy is usually considered when a child is experiencing problems that are having a significant effect on their everyday life or relationships.

 

Child Psychotherapy is a child-centred approach for children who may be experiencing a wide range of problems where there are underlying emotional issues, anxiety or depression.

Individual child psychotherapy aims to bring about change and emotional growth as well as a resolution of emotional problems for the child or young person. 

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Child psychotherapists treat individual children and young people with a wide variety of difficulties.

 

Areas may include:

 

• Difficulties with relationships or social interaction

• Aggression and angry outbursts

• Lack of motivation and low mood

• Irrational fears and worries

• Obsessive and compulsive behaviours

• Anxiety (often expressed in behaviour such as bed-wetting, sleep difficulties, soiling, refusal to eat or drink, refusal to go to school)

• Risk-taking or self-harming behaviour, suicidal thoughts

• Developmental problems

• Communication disorders such as autism

• A child being unhappy, anxious or withdrawn for no apparent reason

• The lasting effects of bereavement, family breakdown, chronic illness, disability, trauma, neglect or abuse

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The work of the therapist is to find a way of carefully helping children to make sense of how they see the world, so that distorted or fixed mis-understandings can be recognised together and reviewed, to enable healthier understandings to develop. Over time this understanding can be internalised by the child so that they can begin to independently recognise and understand their own feelings and behaviour.

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Child Psychotherapy helps children and young people:

 

• To get to know and understand themselves better

• Be more in touch with their feelings and anxieties so that they are better able to manage them

• Be less stuck in particular emotional responses or patterns which are unhelpful

 

Sometimes it may not be necessary to offer a child individual psychotherapy, but the child psychotherapist can offer support and guidance to parents or other agencies involved with the child.

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What is Psychoanalytic thinking?

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Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a type of therapy that helps people uncover and understand unconscious thoughts, feelings, and patterns that influence behaviour, emotional well-being and relationship to self and others. It emphasises the importance of early childhood experiences, internal conflicts, and defence mechanisms in shaping who we are and considers the ways that these can affect us, without us realising it. The therapist helps the patient gain insight into unresolved issues and unconscious motivations. The goal is not just symptom relief but deeper self-understanding and long-term emotional growth.