Emotion recognition can be thought of as the ability to identify and understand emotions in other people. This skill has been referred to by some researchers as ‘cognitive empathy’ (as contrasted with ‘affective’ empathy – with the latter being the ability ‘feel’ or...
As mental health professionals working with children and young people, our primary focus is of course on the mental and emotional well-being of the young humans we have the privilege of supporting. However, anyone who has worked in child/adolescent mental health for...
Those of us who work in child and youth mental health meet *parents* (for brevity I’ll use ‘parents’ throughout this article, but I’m referring of course to all primary caregivers, biological parents or not) every week who are struggling with parenting related...
Depending on how it is defined and assessed, between 5% and 15% of children have significant difficulties with what might be called “challenging behaviours” – for example, those such as following instructions from adults, verbal or physical aggression, impulsivity,...
Children (like adults) often report thoughts, images and beliefs (internal experiences) which they find distressing (for example: “I’m horrible”; “people think I’m boring”; picturing themselves doing badly on a test). There are multiple strategies and approaches for...
Therapy homework (or home practice) has long been a part of mental health treatment for children and families. It has been understood a variety of ways but can be defined as ‘tasks assigned to clients to promote skill acquisition between treatment sessions’ (Dozois,...
