Blog

When does child safeguarding become a safeguarding issue in its own right? When child protection procedures are implemented without cultural competence, and without listening to the experiences of the children whose family roles and values are being pathologised. Gretchen Precey, independent social worker, draws therapists’ attention to the traumatising impact of some state interventions as she shares her encounter with one Eritrean teenager whose anxiety, depression and tics told a complex story.

Increasing numbers of young people are demanding perfection from themselves – and paying a high psychological and emotional price. Jeanine Connor, adolescent psychotherapist and author of a new book about therapy with 16 year olds, discusses the dangers of mis-labelling this presentation and the importance in therapy with teenage perfectionists of modelling imperfection and embracing mess.

Unresolved birth trauma can lead to clients presenting with depression, anxiety and attachment issues – years, and even generations, after the event. As we mark Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week and World Maternal Mental Health Day, Kate Foster, a psychotherapist and former manager of an NHS perinatal counselling service, explains why therapists shouldn’t confine our curiosity about birth experiences to the perinatal period.