Schema Therapy with Children and Adolescents: A Practitioner’s Guide

This book presents the first English language guide to adapting schema therapy (ST) for children and adolescents. Written by the developers of the approach, it presents a wide range of innovative child- and parent-specific techniques, with detailed guidance on how to apply them across five key developmental stages from infancy to young adulthood. Case studies bring the material to life, and the focus extends beyond the core therapeutic relationship to what the authors call ‘schema coaching’ – encouraging parents and carers to consider how their own entrenched ways of thinking, behaving and responding may contribute to or exacerbate a young person’s issues and needs.

In adult schema therapy, therapists differentiate between child modes, parental models, coping modes and the Healthy Adult mode. For young people, the authors focus exclusively on the child modes and in place of the Healthy Adult introduce a healthy Wise Child mode (sometimes called “Clever Sally” or “Clever Sam”). Care is taken not to label as ‘maladaptive’ modes which may still be in the normal range of behaviour for a child’s specific developmental phase. With detailed guidance on how to enact age-appropriate schema dialogues, and imaginative use of play to reinforce or replace imagery rescripting, Schema Therapy for Children and Adolescents allows therapists to help young people put difficult events behind them and choose new, healthier ways forward.

• The first book to adapt schema therapy for children and adolescents – presents the ST-CA model and provides a clear, practical guide to clinical implementation
• Approaches schemas and modes from a perspective of developmental stages, with specific guidance and creative ideas for engaging young people in each age group
• Integrates the child’s environment, involving parents and other carers in children’s schema therapy by exploring their own behavioral patterns and schema modes
• Written by experienced practitioners who are the pioneers of theory, research and practice on schema therapy and interventions for children and young people