Psychotherapeutic Play Therapy: Healing Childhood Trauma
Location
Center for Advanced Learning and Simulation (CALS)
Publication Date
April 2025
Start Date
17-4-2025 8:00 AM
Description
Children explore their identity at a young age. Through exploration, they grow into healthy adolescents. Adequate emotional and physical support is important for neurocognitive and psychosocial development. What happens when this support is nonexistent? Research shows that over 1 billion children worldwide have experienced neglect, violence, or abuse (Lippard et al. 2020). This state of trauma affects children’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Play therapy, a specialized form of psychotherapy, is an evidence-based intervention that allows children to develop coping skills to regulate their thought patterns and behaviors. Therapists utilize a psychodynamic approach to better understand these subjective traumatic experiences (Gillies et al. 2016). A meta-analysis of 17 randomized controlled trials found that play therapy was effective in reducing anxiety, depression, aggression, behavioral problems, and emotional instability (Gupta et al. 2023). Therapists analyze these sessions and guide children through self-expression, healing, and empowerment. Strong attachment to a caregiver, usually a parent(s), correlates with increased feelings of safety and comfort. Difficulty with this attachment creates distrust, emotional dysregulation, and poor health outcomes. The following case explores how child-centered play therapy provided a supportive space that enhanced emotional healing and helped one child reassert control over his life. This case explores a 4-year-old biracial male who faced significant trauma within his life. Child-centered play therapy and adaptive coping techniques were incorporated to help the child work through his painful emotions in a nurturing environment with both his foster mother and clinical psychologist. Early intervention with appropriate exploration of his environment and stressors allowed the child to progress in several domains: physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, foster mother/child relationship, and behavioral. With repeated in-depth counseling and play therapy sessions, the child healed many of his painful scars. Research shows that a higher number of adverse childhood experiences correlate with increased mental health issues, chronic diseases, unsafe behaviors, and a lower life expectancy. Underlying trauma has been associated with altered structural and functional activity in brain regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, insula, and hippocampus (Manthey et al. 2020). Further research should focus on examining the effects of early trauma exposure on brain development, family relationships, and longterm outcomes as adults.
Recommended Citation
Kata, Rahula and Clomburg, Amy PsyD, "Psychotherapeutic Play Therapy: Healing Childhood Trauma" (2025). Dept. of Psychiatry Research Symposium. 9.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/psych_rd/2025/presentations/9
Psychotherapeutic Play Therapy: Healing Childhood Trauma
Center for Advanced Learning and Simulation (CALS)
Children explore their identity at a young age. Through exploration, they grow into healthy adolescents. Adequate emotional and physical support is important for neurocognitive and psychosocial development. What happens when this support is nonexistent? Research shows that over 1 billion children worldwide have experienced neglect, violence, or abuse (Lippard et al. 2020). This state of trauma affects children’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Play therapy, a specialized form of psychotherapy, is an evidence-based intervention that allows children to develop coping skills to regulate their thought patterns and behaviors. Therapists utilize a psychodynamic approach to better understand these subjective traumatic experiences (Gillies et al. 2016). A meta-analysis of 17 randomized controlled trials found that play therapy was effective in reducing anxiety, depression, aggression, behavioral problems, and emotional instability (Gupta et al. 2023). Therapists analyze these sessions and guide children through self-expression, healing, and empowerment. Strong attachment to a caregiver, usually a parent(s), correlates with increased feelings of safety and comfort. Difficulty with this attachment creates distrust, emotional dysregulation, and poor health outcomes. The following case explores how child-centered play therapy provided a supportive space that enhanced emotional healing and helped one child reassert control over his life. This case explores a 4-year-old biracial male who faced significant trauma within his life. Child-centered play therapy and adaptive coping techniques were incorporated to help the child work through his painful emotions in a nurturing environment with both his foster mother and clinical psychologist. Early intervention with appropriate exploration of his environment and stressors allowed the child to progress in several domains: physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, foster mother/child relationship, and behavioral. With repeated in-depth counseling and play therapy sessions, the child healed many of his painful scars. Research shows that a higher number of adverse childhood experiences correlate with increased mental health issues, chronic diseases, unsafe behaviors, and a lower life expectancy. Underlying trauma has been associated with altered structural and functional activity in brain regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, insula, and hippocampus (Manthey et al. 2020). Further research should focus on examining the effects of early trauma exposure on brain development, family relationships, and longterm outcomes as adults.