Play Therapy Interventions with Children's Problems

This is an easy-to-use reference to the most effective play therapy techniques and their substantiated results. Play therapy is not an approach based on guess, trial and error, or whims of the therapist at the moment. It is a well-thought-out, philosophically conceived, developmentally based, and research-supported method of helping children cope with and overcome the problems they experience in the process of living their lives. Concise digests of play therapy procedures explore the most difficult, as well as the most common problems encountered by play therapists. These digests cover play therapy approaches based on a variesty of theoretical positions for dealing with a broad range of specific problems.

A gold mine of useful information. This book will be a practice-saver for play therapists in private practice and agencies that must justify their interventions to insurance providers and managed health care companies. The authors suggest possible DSM-IV diagnoses and both case study and empirical support for play therapy as the treatment of choice with a wide range of presenting problems—exactly the kind of information requested by most insurance companies and other third-party payers., In this volume play therapy articles and dissertations published over the past fifty years are digested for ease of reference. The result is a comprehensive overview of the play therapy literature that will be most useful to play therapists and researchers across the country.

Garry L. Landreth, Ed. D., is a Regents Professor in the Department of Counselor Education at the University of North Texas, where he is founder and Director of the Center for Play Therapy, the largest play therapy training program in the nation. Dr. Landreth is a former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association for Play Therapy and recipient of the prestigious Virginia Axline Distinguished Professional Award for his work in conceptualizing and promoting Child-Centered Play Therapy. His publications include Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship and Play Therapy Interventions with Children's Problems. Dr. Landreth has been a featured speaker at play therapy conferences throughout the United States and in Canada, China, Europe, and South Africa. Linda E. Homeyer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in guidance and counseling at Southwest Texas State University. Dr. Homeyer assisted Texas in becoming the first state chartered by the Association for Play Therapy and has served on the Association's board since that time, currently as its president-elect.