ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace the contribution of psychoanalytic thinking in relation to the long development of mental health services for children and adolescents. The experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children and adolescents has generated an approach to working with parents and families that is significantly different from what is offered by conventional forms of parenting training. The contribution that psychoanalytic thinking can make to a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), both directly through clinical work and indirectly through participation in a team, is dependent on the overall culture in a service. The kind of attention to the particularity and complexity of mental health difficulties that is offered in a sustained way to individual children and young people in psychotherapy is helpful in the range of encounters with those referred to CAMHS. The chapter describes what we feel is distinctive and valuable about a psychoanalytic approach as it has developed over time in the public sector.
