Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is one of the most frequently diagnosed chronic illnesses of childhood. It currently affects approximately 187,000 children and adolescents under the age of 18 years in the United States, and the prevalence continues to rise (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2020). While current research on the use of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) with children with T1D is lacking, research demonstrates that children with this disease are more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression than children without chronic illness (Buchberger et al., 2016; Rechenberg,Whittemore, & Grey, 2017). The use of CCPT as an intervention for children with this chronic illness demonstrates promising opportunities. Many play therapists working outside of medical settings, such as hospitals, may be unfamiliar with T1D. Therefore, many play therapists may not yet understand the considerations and adaptations to CCPT needed for children with T1D and their parents. Children with T1D face many unique challenges that can influence their mental health, and it is important for child-centered play therapists to consider adapting CCPT to meet these challenges as they implement play therapy for this population.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

Children identified as at-risk for school failure need additional intervention for school success. Given the link between emotional development and academic success, it is crucial that schools have effective methods for identifying these students in need and have preventative programs that are developmentally appropriate interventions. The present study examined the long-term impact of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) on a diverse group of at-risk second grade elementary students implemented through Primary Project. The qualifying group received ten 30-minute play therapy sessions throughout one academic semester during their second grade year. In a longitudinal analysis for academic growth, the long-term impact on both the third grade and fourth grade years was measured by the Measure of Academic Progress (MAPS). The findings reveal implications for identification of and interventions for at-risk elementary students and CCPT as an intervention for academic achievement, specifically reading and mathematics scores. Recommendations for future research are also included.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods

When children face their parents’ divorce or separation, they are at risk forexperiencing emotional distress, leading to present and future mental health problems.Simultaneously, divorcing or separating parents are often under great duressemotionally, physically, financially, socially, and legally. Adlerian family play therapy isan approach in which therapists incorporate basic tenets of Individual Psychology andthe premises of Adlerian play therapy to help families work through their struggles inlife and different types of emotional or behavioral problems. This article describes therationale for conducting family play therapy when working with families who strugglewith the aftermath of parental divorce. Adlerian play therapists provide family membersan opportunity to express themselves and facilitate an in-depth understanding of eachfamily member’s lifestyles and mistaken goals of behavior through play and creativetechniques. This can further repair ruptured attachment and enhance functional familyinteractions. A clinical example is provided to illustrate the practice of Adlerian familyplay therapy to help a family of divorce heal the children’s attachment trauma andparents’ emotional distress, and further enhance parent-child relationships after theparental divorce.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skill and Methods
• Special Topics

This quantitative experimental study compared a modified group form of Child- Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) called Child-Centered Group Play Counseling (CCGPC), with a psychoeducational group, and a non-therapeutic control group in an elementary school setting. Participants included second, third and fourth graders from seven elementary schools, who exhibited behavioral and social skills deficits. School counselors conducted the groups weekly for eight weeks. The CCGPC groups were all conducted by a school counselor who was also a Registered Play Therapist. The research questions examined externalizing problem behaviors and social skills with children who received three types of group counseling in an elementary school. The CCGPC group showed statistical significance in reducing externalizing behavior as well as increasing social skills. Both the psychoeducational group and the control group also showed statistical significance in reducing externalizing behavior and increasing social skills. When examining the participants’ self-perceptions, CCGPC did not show statistical significance in increasing social skills. There was no statistically significant difference in the variables when examining the results between the three groups.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics

Advocacy has long played a central role in play therapy and is one vehicle play therapists utilize to help clients reach their goals as well as achieve their truest potential. Exploration of variables that may influence play therapist advocacy to improve client outcomes is needed to inform decisions about how to improve clinician advocacy effectiveness for clients. In this survey method–based quantitative study, a purposeful sample of 303 play therapists completed empathy and advocacy competence measures. The researchers determined higher levels of empathy to be a positive, statistically significant predictor of play therapy advocacy for clients at the individual as well as community levels. Researchers discovered play therapists possessing high levels of empathy would be better able to advocate effectively. Implications for practice, education, and research are discussed.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Special Topics

Filial therapy is a mental health intervention for children originally designed to address mental health clinician shortages by leveraging the time and skills of the clinician to resource the people who spend the most time with the child, rather than being directly involved in the child’s treatment. The current mental health climate in many parts of the world is not dissimilar to the context in which the original filial therapy model was developed, in that there is a disparity between a demanding problem and a shortage in supply of specialist services. There remains a need in school settings for effective interventions to address social, emotional and behavioral problems in children and there is a gap in the degree of reporting on the impact of filial therapy in school settings despite a body of literature supporting the efficacy of the intervention more broadly. This retrospective narrative literature review provides a summary of current and past research publications about filial therapy as a school-based intervention and its effect on student functioning. A thorough search of the literature resulted in an initial 34 publications, 23 of which remained following application of the exclusion criteria. In this article, we adopted the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) approach to reviewing the literature with reference to Ferrari’s (2015) recommended framework for narrative reviews. Overall support for the use of school-based filial therapy interventions was determined given their positive influence on children’s functional outcomes.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Play Therapy History
• Seminal or Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods

Gendered language and toy preference and use were analyzed in an observational research study with over 400 minutes of play therapy sessions with 24 adult and 22 child participants. Observations were focused around what type of toys were most selected by male compared to female children. In addition, observation research was used to determine what toys are identified as female, male, or gender neutral by both adults and children. Female children played with more toys overall and with a greater variety of toys than the male child participants. Male children chose to play with a far greater percentage of masculine toys than did female children. Across the 4 participant groups, male child, female child, male adult, and female adult, all 4 groups labeled toys as male most frequently. In addition, both the male and female children labeled toys associated with acting out or aggression as predominantly male. These findings were in keeping with expectations around learned gender stereotypes found in numerous other studies.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Special Topics

Mental health professionals must merge multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills into their clinical practices because of the growing cultural demographics in the United States. However, few interventions are documented that contribute to the cultural identity development of multiracial children and families. Adlerian play therapy is a developmentally appropriate intervention for children that emphasizes social interest, resilience qualities, and family atmosphere that could help multiracial children form a healthy cultural identity. This article further presents the application of Adlerian play therapy with multiracial children through the use of a case study.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics

July 2019 | Volume 28 | Issue 3

As the demand for childhood mental health intervention rises, there is a need for increased evidentiary support for developmentally sensitive approaches that address childhood mental health symptoms. Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) has been recognized as one of the most frequently used approaches for this population due to its responsiveness to cognitive and psycho-social developmental levels. A meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the degree of effectiveness of CCPT for decreasing common childhood mental health symptoms based on single-case research design (SCRD) data. The systematic search strategy yielded 11 CCPT SCRD studies with 65 total effect sizes that were analyzed to determine omnibus treatment effect. Results indicated CCPT had a moderate effect for decreasing internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and social skill deficits. This study adds to the evidence base for CCPT incorporating SCRD data into the corpus of CCPT meta-analytic data and provides further support that CCPT should be considered an appropriate intervention to address common childhood mental health symptoms. Based on these results, the authors provide implications for CCPT practitioners and for future directions to build the intervention’s evidence base.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

Children with deafness face societal obstacles every day that require navigation of environmental and communication factors. Deaf children raised in hearing families encounter barriers to development in a hearing world that limits their expression of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Child-centered play therapy may provide an opportunity for deaf children to experience a therapeutic relationship that fosters the child’s growth and exploration of thoughts, feelings, and emotions in an open and accepting environment. Modifying practices of child-centered play therapy to meet the needs of deaf children using American Sign Language can provide a new opportunity for therapeutic access for these children in a culturally responsive manner.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics