Experiences of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for young people with a major mental Illness, and their psychotherapists within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

This thesis is a retrospective qualitative study of former adolescent patients suffering severe mental illness, within public mental health services between 2002-2012. Their lived experience of open-ended psychoanalytic psychotherapy was meaningful and important. The development of a positive and trusted therapeutic bond facilitated the process of therapeutic change, along with the skills and stance of the psychotherapist, and the motivation of the adolescent to form a working alliance. Improvement occurred in developing a sense of identity, capacity for reflection, awareness, management of feelings and behaviours and these changes in turn, benefited their interpersonal relationships. Most importantly it kept adolescents alive.