Lockdown and adolescent mental health: reflections from a child and adolescent psychotherapist

Abstract

The author, a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist working in the UK NHS, discusses the varied impacts of ‘lockdown’ on adolescents, their parents and the psychotherapists who work with them, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in this short observational paper that contributes to the Waiting in Pandemic Times Wellcome Collection in response to COVID-19. She asks, particularly, how psychological therapies are positioned during such a crisis, and whether the pressures of triage and emergency can leave time and space for sustained emotional and psychological care. She wonders how psychoanalytic time with its containing rhythm can be held onto in the face of the need for triage on the one hand and the flight to online and telephone delivery on the other. Above all, the author questions how the apparent suspension of time during lockdown is belied by the onward pressure of adolescent time, and how this can be understood by, and alongside, troubled adolescents.