The Vasarhelyi method of child art psychotherapy: an adjunctive treatment in childhood depression

Abstract

We describe the use of child art psychotherapy (CAP) following the Vasarhelyi method in an 11-year-old female with a history of anxiety and depression which limited her capacity to attend school and in a 15-year-old male who had a history of depressive symptoms with suicidal thinking. In each case, the use of other therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy was not possible or unsuccessful. Through the creation of images, each young person revealed concerns which had not been previously verbalised, and recovery was linked in time to the revelation of these worries. We propose the use of the Vasarhelyi method of CAP as an adjunctive treatment of depression in young people.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of the European Erasmus Student exchange programme for this study. We would like to acknowledge Alison Byrne, Child Art Psychotherapist, Department of Child Art Psychotherapy, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin.