Association of Attachment and Reflective Function with Baseline Symptoms in Child and Adolescent Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to verify the associations between symptoms reported at baseline, attachment style and reflective function (RF) in children and adolescents. For this, we conducted a cross-sectional and naturalistic study, including 90 children and adolescents aged between 9 and 17 years old (M = 13.04, SD = 2.72). Instruments were a demographic form, the Child Behavior Checklist, the Friends and Family Interview and the Reflective Function Questionnaire for Youths. From our findings, internalizing symptoms were reported in 74.4% of the cases, and externalizing symptoms in 55.6%. Concerning the attachment styles, 46.7% of the cases were classified as insecure-dismissing, 38.9% as insecure-preoccupied, 10% as secure and 4.4% as disorganized. Participants’ scores for RF were low. We found associations between attachment styles and anxiety, depression and withdrawal symptoms. We found significant differences between the insecure-dismissing style and the insecure-preoccupied and disorganized styles groups regarding anxiety and depression symptoms. The secure attachment style group showed significant differences in withdrawal symptoms when compared to insecure attachment style groups. Further studies exploring associations between attachment styles, RF and psychopathology in childhood and adolescence, could contribute to the evaluation and planning of psychotherapies processes with this population.