When Your Heart Goes Out to the Child: Reflections on Therapist-Initiated Termination of Treatment in Child and Youth Therapy Groups.

Therapist-initiated termination of treatment for a child from a therapy group presents unique ethical and clinical dilemmas. While termination in group therapy has been widely discussed, the topic of forced termination remains underexplored. This paper expands and elaborates on this issue by addressing key challenges specific to working with younger populations, including therapist-patient-parent dynamics, boundary setting, physical contact, and developmental considerations. We examine the implications of therapist-initiated termination for the child and for other group members. A structured decision-making framework is proposed to assist therapists in evaluating the necessity of removal while minimizing potential harm. By integrating clinical and ethical considerations, this paper offers a refined perspective on the complexities of therapist-initiated termination in child and adolescent group therapy.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  International journal of group psychotherapy

• Publication date

  2025-08-04

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/00207284.2025.2526330PMID 40758854
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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