Introduction to Mentalization-Based Approaches for Parents, Children, Youths, and Families

Abstract

Families mentalize when they are trying to understand each other's behavior based on intentional mental states. This manuscript aims to provide an introduction and brief overview on how the concept of mentalization can provide a useful framework for clinicians to understand psychopathology in children, youth and their families. Furthermore, we outline how mentalizationbased techniques and interventions can be applied to build epistemic trust and re-establish mentalizing in families using clinical vignettes of first sessions in different clinical settings. The manuscript concludes with a brief summary about the current evidence base for MBT interventions with children, young people and families and provides an outlook for future clinical and research work.

Integrative parent psychotherapy: Using the cyclical psychodynamics approach.

“…The mentalizing-informed therapist may also use empathic validation and normalizing to reduce intense arousal, such as shame and guilt, which may interfere with mentalizing. Other techniques include exploration, critical thinking, and challenging (Volkert et al, 2022).…”

Adapting Short-Term Mentalization-Based Therapy to ICD-11 Personality Disorder in Adolescents

“…MBT has gained considerable popularity as a targeted treatment approach for parents, children, adolescents, and families across many levels of personality disorder severity, as evidenced by its wide use in both clinical and non-clinical settings [15,16]. Jørgensen and colleagues [17] recently systematically reviewed the beneficial and harmful effects of psychotherapies for BPD in adolescents.…”

Mentalization-Based Parenting Program for Child Maltreatment Prevention: A Pre–Post Study of 12-Week Lighthouse Group Program

“…In recent years, one of the most promising approaches in parental support is the focus on the impact of mentalization in the parent–child relationship [ 14 ]. Mentalizing is the capacity to imagine and understand mental states in the self and other such as desires, needs, emotions, beliefs, goals, and thoughts and to perceive these as underlying behavior [ 15 , 16 ].…”