The (almost) impossible profession: face-to-face child psychotherapy during the Covid-19 outbreak

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus outbreak required, among many changes and restrictions, a sudden and abrupt transition to online psychotherapy. This transition presented especially huge challenges to child psychotherapists. But as weeks and months have passed, and the virus has stayed with us, as our state of crisis has become routine, we are facing new and even greater challenges. We are back to the clinic with our young patients, but we are doing our therapeutic work while facing the danger of infection, wearing face masks, and being required to keep physical distance from each other. At the same time, children and parents, as well as the therapist herself, suffer from the consequences of the prolonged situation of crisis: there is anxiety, depression, and what seems worst of all, a sinking into apathy and indifference. Building on the evocative paper by Betty Joseph Thinking about the playroom, I will offer some preliminary insights into this (almost) impossible situation, in the context of our effort to keep our work, our patients and ourselves, alive and well.

KEYWORDS:

• Child psychotherapy
• playroom
• Covid-19
• coronavirus
• trauma
• face masks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yonit Shulman

Yonit Shulman Senior Clinical Psychologist, Head of the Psychology Sector in the Autism Treatment and Research Center, Association for Children at Risk; Academic co-director of the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Programme, Advanced Studies, School of Social Work, Tel-Aviv University. Formerly Head of the Child and Adolescent Section of the Israeli Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association and in private practice.