Corrective Attachment Therapy
About This Program
Target Population: Children adopted from foster care or foreign orphanages or biological children who have failed to develop secure attachments
For children/adolescents ages: 0 – 21
Program Overview
Corrective Attachment Therapy is an intensive outpatient program (IOP) that consists of 30 hours of therapy (3 hours per day for 10 consecutive business days). A team of 2 to 5 therapists work with each family. The program is holistic and integrative relying on a variety of experiential and didactic components.
Program Goals
The overall goals of Corrective Attachment Therapy are:
- Facilitate secure attachment in the parent-child relationship
- Address the child’s trauma
- Address attachment disorder
- Address negative belief systems about self and others
- Enhance secure attachments
- Increase trust
- Increase affection and intimacy
- Increase communication and reciprocity
- Reduce anger and negative patterns of relating
- Reduce negative relationship patterns in family relationships
- Work through sibling issues
- Enhance stability
- Support the family from inside and outside
- Facilitate a climate of hope, joy, and positivity
- Teach parents specific parenting skills and attitudes effective with this population
- Address the parents’ historical and current issues that are unresolved, thereby preventing healthy family functioning
Essential Components
The essential components of Corrective Attachment Therapy include that it is:
- Systematic: Attachment develops in the context of overlapping relationship systems, including parent-child, marital, family, extended kin, and community.
- Holistic and integrative: Treatment is focused on mind, body, behaviors, emotions, relationships, and morality. Therapeutic interventions and strategies are varied – experiential, psychoeducational, cognitive, and skill-based. The holistic approach is based on the concept that many factors interact to create both health and dysfunction:
- Attachment trauma is first revisited to address core issues.
- Next, revisions are facilitated, in belief systems, choices, relationship patterns, and coping skills.
- Lastly, revitalization includes celebrating achievements, cementing positive changes, and enhancing hope for the future.
Program Delivery
Child/Adolescent Services
Corrective Attachment Therapy directly provides services to children/adolescents and addresses the following:
- Self-destructive, lack of impulse control, aggression, irresponsible, stealing, lying, lack of cause-and-effect thinking, victim mentality, mood changes
Services Involve Family/Support Structures:
This program involves the family or other support systems in the individual's treatment: The parents are either in the room with the child or watching the child’s session on closed-circuit TV.
Recommended Intensity:
3 hours per day for 10 days
Recommended Duration:
2 weeks
Delivery Setting
This program is typically conducted in a(n):
- Outpatient Clinic
Homework
Corrective Attachment Therapy includes a homework component:
Parents are asked to practice corrective attachment parenting skills
Languages
Corrective Attachment Therapy has materials available in a language other than English:
Japanese
For information on which materials are available in this language, please check on the program's website or contact the program representative (contact information is listed at the bottom of this page).
Resources Needed to Run Program
The typical resources for implementing the program are:
Sound-proofing, one-way mirror, or video
Education and Training
Prerequisite/Minimum Provider Qualifications
Master’s degree in a social science
Education and Training Resources
There is a manual that describes how to implement this program , and there is training available for this program.
Training Contact:
- Terry Levy
Evergreen Psychotherapy Center/Attachment Treatment and Training Institute
www.evergreenpsychotherapycenter.com/treatment
phone: (866) 674-4029 x103
Training is obtained:
Internships and externships are available onsite. Therapists participate as interns in a 2-week Intensive Outpatient Program. 1 and 2-day seminars are also available around the country.
Number of days/hours:
Internship/externship is 2 weeks. Seminars are 1 to 2 days.
Relevant Published, Peer-Reviewed Research
This program has been reviewed and it was determined that this program lacks the type of published, peer-reviewed research that meets the CEBC criteria for a scientific rating of 1 – 5. Therefore, the program has been given the classification of "NR - Not able to be Rated." It was reviewed because it was identified by the topic expert as a program being used in the field, or it is being marketed and/or used in California with children receiving services from child welfare or related systems and their parents/caregivers. Some programs that are not rated may have published, peer-reviewed research that does not meet the above stated criteria or may have eligible studies that have not yet been published in the peer-reviewed literature. For more information on the "NR - Not able to be Rated" classification, please see the Scientific Rating Scale.
Currently, there are no published, peer-reviewed research studies for Corrective Attachment Therapy.
Additional References
No reference materials are currently available for Corrective Attachment Therapy.
Contact Information
- Terry M. Levy, PhD
- Agency/Affiliation: Evergreen Psychotherapy Center/Attachment Treatment and Training Institute
- Website: www.evergreenpsychotherapycenter.com/treatment
- Email: info@attachmentexperts.com
- Phone: (866) 674-4029
- Fax: (303) 674-4078
Date Research Evidence Last Reviewed by CEBC: May 2014
Date Program Content Last Reviewed by Program Staff: March 2018
Date Program Originally Loaded onto CEBC: June 2014