UMH (0627) 610 - Child-Parent Psychotherapy: An Introduction

Credits: 2.00

Students will learn a dyadic approach to intervention for 0-5 year olds who have experienced at least one traumatic event and/or are experiencing mental health, attachment, and/or behavioral problems. The treatment is based in attachment theory and also integrates psychodynamic, developmental, trauma, social learning, and cognitive behavioral theories.

Free Note: Required for students in IMH-DP program.

Observe and identify unfolding competencies of the child in context of relationship- identifying strengths, needs, individual differences and capacity for change.

Conduct interviews in a supportive, therapeutic, open-ended style allowing the interviewee to teach the interviewer and tell his/her story.

Establish and sustain a trusting working alliance with primary caregivers/parents and children consistent with the centrality of relationships as the foundational principle for all Infant Mental Health and Developmental Practice.

Work with primary caregivers/parents and child together in a natural setting suited to the child’s developmental age in accordance with evolving best practice. .

Address the transactional aspects of developmental and relational factors when formulating and implementing intervention plans within the scope of one’s discipline specific practice.

Address the role and importance of concrete services, reflective developmental guidance, crisis management and advocacy in therapeutic and developmental work with families.

Implement developmentally appropriate, evidence-based and evolving best practice interventions with fidelity and skill.

Attend and respond to parental histories of trauma, deprivation and loss as they impact the parent-child relationship and intervention process.

Implement multi-modal intervention techniques when appropriate that may cover a range of . strategies including but not limited to: individual, dyadic and family interventions, relationship and play-based strategies, psychodynamic and interpretive methodology, behavioral and cognitive- behavioral strategies, structured and open-ended/ process techniques.