Person-centred care
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When young people bring their own digital support into therapy
Some young people come to therapy already using apps, videos or chatbots to help them through difficult moments. Asking about that support can be a useful way into the work. The answers can tell a clinician a good deal about the young person, and they open questions about the tools themselves and about how the family sees them.
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The use of the term ‘complex’ in mental health services: is it time to move towards more inclusive language?
What happens when we describe a young person’s mental health presentation as “complex”? This commentary explores how the language of complexity may create barriers to care.
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Cultural Formulation: When Does It Become Stereotyping?
Cultural formulation can help clinicians understand how culture shapes distress, help-seeking and experiences of illness. However, when cultural knowledge replaces curiosity about the individual, it can become the very stereotyping it is intended to prevent.
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Keeping Families in the Room during a Crisis
In crisis care for a young person, the parent or carer might be hard to place. The carer carries the risk around the clock, yet often stands outside the formal care the young person receives, and is sometimes treated as part of the problem. Professor Pooja Saini, speaking at a conference on brief interventions for young people and families, described crisis care from two sides at once: families on the edge, and the staff meeting them while close to breaking point. One question stayed afterward: what it would take to keep the carer inside the room instead of at its edge.
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Meet the expert: Therapeutic Powers of Play, with Laura Hanks
On 17 March 2026, ACAMH will host a webinar Unlocking Therapeutic Powers of Play: Practical Techniques for Safe and Effective Play Therapy. We caught up with the presenter – Laura Hanks, a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Wales and BAPT Accredited Play Therapist with experience across public and private sectors – about the topic itself, her career, and her hopes for the event.
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Young people’s ‘neural fingerprints’ might permit a precision-medicine approach to depression
Precision medicine has been discussed in medical research since the late 1990’s. Only recently, however, has this concept aroused interest and inspired relevant research in psychiatry, particularly in adolescents.
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Patient-centred practitioners prioritise PROMs
Clinicians who use therapeutic approaches that focus on patients’ perceptions, such as CBT, may be more likely to seek patient feedback.
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