Key words: attachment, treatment, schema therapy-children
Objective: ReAttach is a new intervention that has shown to be an effective treatment for maladaptive emotional patterns of adults. Maladaptive functioning already starts in childhood (Bowlby 1969/1997). In order to develop an effective child and family intervention, it is important to incorporate both the parent and child and work on both sides of the parent/child relationship.: to examine the effect of five sessions ReAttach on the behavior of children with a variety of psychological complaints. A second objective was to measure the transferability of the method and perform treatment integrity check for the professionals in training.
Method: A cohort of 21 therapists was trained to perform ReAttach with a group of children (n=83). The behavior of this group of children was assessed with the Children Behavior Checklist (CBCL), before and after five ReAttach therapy sessions.
Results and Conclusions: the data reported here supports the hypothesis that ReAttach may be an attractive experimental treatment for children with psychological complaints. Although these therapists were newly trained, and therefore relatively inexperienced, a significant reduction of all (sub)clinical scores on the CBCL was found.
