Introduction and overview – Psychodynamic therapy and the changing emotional and social landscape of childhood and parenthood

The 21st century presents us with challenges with respect to the way in which we disseminate information, particularly in the area of mental health. A post-modern perspective asserts that we cannot isolate a particular treatment such as time-limited psychodynamic psychotherapy for children, young people and their parents, from a broader critical refl ection and examination of professional practices concerned with child and family mental health. Our perspective of our practice can also not be separated from a values and ethically based position with which it must essentially be intertwined. In work with children and young people therefore, psychotherapy and advocacy become one.