Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy in adolescent depression: Two case studies

Abstract

In this paper the authors outline the basic principles of a manualized, brief psychodynamic approach that was evaluated as part of an outcome study within the National Health Service researching the effectiveness of two different forms of psychotherapy for major depression in childhood/adolescence: Focused Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Systems Integrative Family Therapy. As well as describing some of the difficulties encountered in short-term dynamic psychotherapy with adolescents, the authors present therapeutic work with two adolescents with major depressive disorder who were both seen as part of the research study. The authors depict some of the challenges and unavoidable difficulties which emerged during the therapy, arising from the needs of the research programme.

Keywords:

• psychodynamic short-term psychotherapy
• depression in children and adolescents
• process study
• individual psychotherapy

Acknowledgements

This study was part of the European Research Program about Childhood Depression, performed in London, Athens and Helsinki and partly funded by the European Community: concerted action contract No. BMH4-CT98-3231 DG12-SSMI. Central co-ordination of the project took place at the Tavistock Clinic, London.