The Major Types of Child Therapy

These are the therapy approaches most often used with children suffering from trauma or loss. You can expect to encounter one or more of these, depending on the needs of your child and family as well as the style and training of the therapist. Each approach can be effective when it is properly used.

1. Family Therapy recognizes the importance of the child's relationships to parents and other family members. The therapist can learn more about the child from family members, and can help family members to get better at supporting the child's recovery.
   
2. Talk Therapy involves helping the child to face the memory, and talk through the various upsetting parts. This is used more with older children and teen-agers.
   
3. Play Therapy might include art, puppets, games, or play-acting. Younger children often find it easier to work with their concerns symbolically, and in an active way, rather than by using words.
   
4. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy uses small rewards or successes as motivators to replace negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with more useful ones, in a systematic, stepwise manner.
   
5. Pharmacotherapy relies on medication to help a child feel more normal. Rarely used in cases of trauma and loss, its function would be to stabilize a child at risk of suicide or other extreme behavior. Medication would normally be discontinued once the child has successfully completed other treatment and is no longer at risk.
   
6. EMDR is specialized for helping children to work through a trauma or loss memory thoroughly and quickly, sometimes in a single session. This new method has already been proven in controlled studies, and will become more widely available as local therapists obtain training.