This book uniquely addresses the application of CBT to children and young people within health, school and community contexts.

With the recent expansion of increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) CBT is increasingly applied to work with children outside the traditional therapy clinic. This book provides accessible knowledge and practice skills for professional staff working with troubled children and young people in real-world settings. Front-line practitioners commonly face children with complex patterns of difficulties that do not fit clear diagnostic categories. Moreover, long waiting lists and fixed lengths of treatment don't always fit the presenting needs. Correspondingly, the authors take a much-needed realistic approach to applying CBT to childhood problems.

At the center of this book is the child, the authors moving outwards to cover childhood itself, the principles, core practice and techniques of CBT and its adaptation to the context of the therapy. This is relevant and accessible reading for a wide range of specialist child trainees and practitioners, including new IAPT therapists, counselors, nurses, teachers and social workers.

Childhood Problems and Distress

Childhood problems and distress

What Does the CBT Practitioner Need to Know?

CBT practitioners need to be able to recognise common ways that children and young people display or communicate their own distress in order to be able to make a judgement as to whether a presenting problem justifies a professional intervention using CBT. The challenge for the CBT therapist is to distinguish children and young people with ongoing psychological disorders from a wider group of children who may be experiencing briefer, transient or even adaptive forms of unhappiness such as, for example, grief in response to the death of a grandparent.

Developmental Trajectories

This idea of a developmental trajectory is simple, as depicted in Figure 3.1. Normal development is represented as a diagonal line ...

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