Dramatherapy focusing on maternal insightfulness: A preliminary report

This study aimed to enlist the child development studies literature and Dramatherapy practice to create an intervention program for mothers of children at risk due to inadequate parental care. Thus, we created a manualized treatment of Dramatherapy focusing on maternal insightfulness. Maternal insightfulness refers to the capacity to see things from the child's point of view, and is considered as a crucial step for therapeutic change in the context of mother–child relationship. We created a 10-week Dramatherapy group intervention focusing on the core concepts of maternal insightfulness: insightfulness, separateness, complexity and acceptance, and we used dramatic means to explore and experience these components of maternal insightfulness. We used the insightfulness assessment interview (IA) pre- and post-intervention to evaluate the changes that occurred. In this preliminary report we describe the intervention and illustrate with a specific example the positive changes that occurred following it.

► We created a manualized treatment for mothers of children at risk due to inadequate parental care.
► This is a short-term, group intervention of Dramatherapy focusing on maternal insightfulness.
► Maternal insightfulness refers to the capacity to see things from the child's point of view.
► Maternal insightfulness is considered as a crucial step for therapeutic change in the context of mother–child relationship.
► We describe a case study demonstrating the change pre- and post-intervention as measured using the insightfulness assessment.