Socially withdrawn young people: how do child and adolescent psychotherapists understand and experience working with them in a London mental health context? An interpretative phenomenological analysis.

This research project aimed at learning more about adolescents and young adults who withdraw into their rooms away from society, in the eyes of the child and adolescent psychotherapists who work with them. The study explored this concept, first identified in Japan as ‘hikikomori’ (shutting in), in a UK context, where it is rapidly growing, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is increasingly coming to the attention of mental health services. The aim of the project was to investigate child and adolescent psychotherapists’ understanding and lived experiences of working with withdrawn young people in order to begin to contribute to a knowledgebase around this topic that can hopefully, with further research, have implications for future clinical services in Great Britain. The study incorporates firstly a review of the literature and secondly an empirical project that took place in two London-based mental health settings in the form of four semi-structured interviews with Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists who had clinical experience of working with withdrawn young people. The interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and five main themes emerged: ‘the who and the what’, ‘contributing factors’, ‘a retreat from life’, ‘an entrenched problem’, and ‘the road to recovery’. These themes and their subthemes were explored in relation to empirical studies in the literature and psychoanalytic theories on ‘psychic retreats’ and on adolescence. The implications of the findings were considered and recommendations made.