How does Play Therapy help children and young people?

Play is a great way to support children to help sort out their internal processing, thoughts, feelings, and make sense of experiences. Play helps children and young people to heal from experiences of adversity and trauma and other social and emotional challenges because it doesn’t require the child to speak and describe what’s happened. Therefore, Play Therapy can be more successful when talk therapy has not been effective for children. Our brain is designed with incredible filtering and filing systems that are supported to work smoothly while we play as children. Play helps the brain to understand an experience, make sense of what’s happened and then allows the memories to process, the thoughts to organise themselves and allows children to understand and regulate, accordingly.

This means that play therapy can be a good therapeutic support for children who have experienced grief and loss, childhood trauma and family separation. Play Therapy can also improve neural integration for children with ADD, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Autism Spectrum and has also been found to be effective in supporting children experiencing anxiety and depression.

Why it works?

As championed by Ray, (2011), Play Therapy works well for children because it is FUN! For children, we know that the more fun the therapy is, the less resistance they will show to engage in therapy!

Symbolic expressionism allows children to use symbols to express their thoughts, what they can feel in their body and their emotion, even when they may not have the cognition or language skills to verbalise what’s happening. The child is not defined by their reality and can demonstrate through play, their understanding of the world.

It’s Cathartic. Play therapy allows children to release and find relief from what they are experiencing, particularly non-directive play therapy.

Play Therapy supports Social Development. It allows children to develop and experience healthy and safe communication and practice strategies that might work for them in social situations. The relationship that the child shares with the therapist supports the child to understand what a safe relationship can feel like and gives children the opportunity to strengthen social skills needed to support a similar relationship with others.

Play Therapy supports children to Master skills. Play therapy offers children the chance to develop a sense of control and capability within their world. It allows them to practice skills until they feel confident in their ability.

Play Therapy supports children to experience a Release of energy. Children are able to freely express their energy, large or small, as it’s a safe space to do so.

It Fosters Emotional Wellness and allows abreaction (a reaction away from trauma), positive emotions, counterconditioning fears, reduces stress and supports stress management (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014).

Play Therapy Enhances Social Relationships and allows children to experience a therapeutic relationship as well as supports a positive attachment, helps develop social confidence and empathy for others (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014).

Increases Personal Strengths and creates opportunities for the child to creatively problem solve, build resilience in a safe environment, develop morals, develops self-regulation and positive self-esteem (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014).

Evidence Supporting the Effectiveness of Play Therapy

There are several studies that have occurred around the world that have shown sound support for the effectiveness of Play Therapy. Blanco & Ray (2010) found Play Therapy to be an effective integrated clinical support to assist academic achievement in children, finding significantly improved cognitive functioning and capacity to understand tasks after engaging in Play Therapy.

Blanco, Holliman, Munro, Toland & Farnham (2017) found children’s performance in class improved in subjects such as mathematics, reading, narration and spoken language after they were engaged in Play Therapy.

Wilson & Ray (2018) found that children were well equipped to engage with other children of similar age, showed increased empathy towards themselves and others and increased care towards others in class. Wilson & Ray (2018) also found that children demonstrating aggression at school were able to reduce levels of aggression as they had a way to release emotion and feel relief during Play Therapy sessions. Further, the relational process within Play Therapy helped those children see themselves in a different light, feeling more confident and worthy of positive relationships (Wilson & Ray, 2018). Play Therapy was also found to have supported the children to engage in more positive relationships with the class teachers (Wilson & Ray, 2018).

Ray, Bratton, Rhine & Jones (2001) found in a meta-analysis study, that Play Therapy was as effective as all other therapies, however, they discovered that the inclusion of parents through Filial Therapy significantly increased its effectiveness in comparison to when the child was engaged in one-on-one Play Therapy.