Raised by a Schizophrenic Mother: Application of Emotion Focused Therapy in a Clinical Case with Mild Depression

An important number of studies show that children raised by parents who suffer from severe psychiatric disorders have higher risk of poor mental health and bad social outcomes. The paper describes the experiential emotion-focused psychotherapeutic intervention in a case of depression. First we present a brief description of the main treatment approach for depression in emotion-focused therapy, completed by the case conceptualization model in process-experiential psychotherapy. Then we will present the main research findings, both process and outcome studies, which demonstrated, during the past decades, the efficiency of the emotion-focused approach in the treatment of depression. The clinical case is a young woman, aged 34, mother of two children, who suffers for mild depression. As child, she was raised by a mother diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The lack of secure attachment with her mother during childhood is reflected in difficulties with intimacy and trust in her adult relationships, which causes her present depression.