The Future of Psychotherapy for Youth

Caleb Spiro; Peter Economou

doi:10.21467/ajss.11.1.52-62

Authors

Caleb Spiro Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2517-1266
Peter Economou Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1339-0824

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21467/ajss.11.1.52-62

Abstract

Despite countless modifications to adapt adult psychotherapy to treat pediatric populations, recent meta-analytic findings have found only modest effect sizes for the treatment of pediatric depression. Additionally, recent neuroscientific evidence suggests that most mental health disorders share greater comorbidity with other distinct mental health disorders and also have greater within-disorder heterogeneity than previously thought. This review aims to integrate recent findings of analytic reviews with developments in neuroscience to encourage the field to think differently about how to best improve pediatric psychotherapy and our understanding of the developing brain. This article examines why our approach to treating mood disorders in the pediatric population must change based on our current understanding of the neurocognitive and psychosocial etiologies of these disorders and to highlight the importance transdiagnostic perspectives. Perhaps, neuroscientific methods can one day become adjunctive to psychotherapy to help personalize approaches, and to help provide valuable insight into emerging psychopathology even before symptoms manifest.

Keywords:

Psychotherapy, neuroscience, youth

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References

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