© 2002 Oxford University Press
Research Commentary |
Brief Psychotherapy With Children and Adolescents: Recent Treatment Outcome Studies
From the Department of Psychology (Professor Emeritus) at the University of Colorado.
Contact author: Bernard L. Bloom, PhD, 240 Abbey Place, Boulder, CO 80302. E-mail: jobbloom{at}home.com.
An imaginative group of articles have been published in the past several years describing a rich array of brief clinical interventions designed to be of help to children and adolescents. A small number of these interventions have been rigorously evaluated, but those whose outcomes have been studied have demonstrated very promising results. In fact, the last decade has witnessed a significant increase in published reports of brief psychotherapy with children and adolescents, including a number of both controlled and uncontrolled treatment outcome studies. The principal difference between these two types of outcome studies depends on whether data from some comparison group or groups have been collected and contrasted with the results of the index treatment under investigation.
KEY WORDS: brief child therapy, brief adolescent therapy, school problems, physical illness, sexual abuse, behavior disorders, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, parental illness, parental death