Short-term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (STPP) is a manualised, time-limited model of psychoanalytic psychotherapy comprising twenty-eight weekly sessions for the adolescent patient and seven sessions for parents or carers, designed so that it can be delivered within a public mental health system, such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in the UK.
It has its origins in psychoanalytic theoretical principles, clinical experience, and empirical research suggesting that psychoanalytic treatment of this duration can be effective for a range of disorders, including depression, in children and young people. The manual explicitly focuses on the treatment of moderate to severe depression, both by detailing the psychoanalytic understanding of depression in young people and through careful consideration of clinical work with this group. It is the first treatment manual to describe psychoanalytic psychotherapy for adolescents with depression.
The treatment approach described in this manual has been used in a multi-site randomised controlled trial in the UK, 'Improving Mood with Psychoanalytic and Cognitive Therapies' (IMPACT) and internationally. It is presented here as a treatment to be used in routine clinical practice and will be of interest to child psychotherapists, multi-disciplinary professionals in young peopleaEURO (TM)s mental health, service providers, and researchers alike.
After describing theoretical models of depression and presenting an overview of STPP as a treatment model, the manual details the specific stages of the STPP process for the therapist and adolescent patient. It then describes the nature and scope of parallel work with parents and gives a detailed account of the function of supervision.
Author Biography
Jocelyn Catty, MA (Oxon), DPhil, is a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist working with adolescents in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in South London, and an adult psychotherapist in independent practice. She is Research Lead for the doctoral training in child psychotherapy at the Tavistock Centre and co-editor of the Tavistock Clinic Series. She was previously Senior Research Fellow in Mental Health at St George', University of London, with a special interest in the therapeutic alliance, and has published in social psychiatry, psychotherapy, and English literature.
Simon Cregeen is Head of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Manchester and Salford CAMHS, and Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust.
Carol Hughes, now retired, had a long career as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist within the NHS and social care.
Nick Midgley is Academic Course Director of the doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy at the British Psychotherapy Foundation/Anna Freud Centre and Lecturer in the Research Department of Clinical Educational and Health Psychology, UCL.
Maria Rhode is Emeritus Professor of Child Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London.
Margaret Rustin is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, and an Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She has pioneered and supported the extension of training in psychoanalytic observational approaches to training across the United Kingdom and in a number of other countries.
