The practice patterns and attitudes of play therapists on family play therapy: Where are we?
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The integration of family and play therapies has been examined widely in the literature and shown to capture the independent benefits of both modalities into one treatment approach. However, very little is known about what factors contribute to the practice of family play therapy and what professionals working with children actually do with families. This dissertation describes a study involving a survey of 295 play therapists, examining their practice habits and treatment approaches in their work with children and families. It reports the findings of their practice patterns and systemic conceptualizations with children and families and, using multivariate analyses, analyzes their relationships with these therapists’ perceptions, attitudes, training and education factors in the area of family and play therapies. It was found that play therapists engaged in family work with varying level of frequencies, showing the highest rates for working with parents directly and in parent-child sessions. They also showed a trend using play therapy about half the time they saw parents and families, showing a decreased rate of using play therapy in general when working with adolescents, families and couples (as opposed to children). In the area of systemic conceptualizations, play therapists reported high rates of examining family and social environment factors in all areas of their treatment approaches, as well as in their overall treatment frameworks, and showed a comparably lower emphasis in examining the child’s emotional factors.