‘How does the magic work?’ Exploring parents’ experience of waiting in the waiting room with a child in once-weekly psychotherapy, an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the treatments offered to children by qualified and trainee child psychotherapists in CAMHS, but little is known about the emotional impact this has on parents. This project aims to investigate what meaning parents give to the fact that their child is engaged in such treatment and their experience of waiting for their child in the waiting room. The data for this project was collected through semi-structured interviews with four parents whose child engaged in once-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the generic CAMHS where I was based while training as a child psychotherapist. The data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The following themes emerged from the analysis: ‘The referral to CAMHS’, ‘Managing the transitions’, ‘In the waiting room’, ‘The impact of psychotherapy’. The findings show how hard it is for parents to think and talk about the traumatic experiences that brought their child to be referred to CAMHS and the emotional turmoil parents go through while waiting for their child to be offered treatment; the waiting in the waiting room also triggers strong ambivalent feelings and fantasies about what happens in the therapy room behind closed doors. The findings also show that parents manage their child’s transitions to and from the therapy room in different ways; some might find ways not to get in touch with their feelings and thoughts, while others feel contained by the therapeutic framework. The findings also shed some light on the positive impact having a child in once-weekly psychotherapy can have not only on the child, but on the whole family system; parents reported that they noticed an improvement on their child’s ability to self-regulate and progress in development, while feeling contained with their anxieties and feel like a “normal family”.