This FEPTO Network meeting in Ghent was very special because we helped each other. Help the helpers was our theme and we clarified the stress factors and supported and relieved each other.
13 psychodrama therapists from 7 countries experienced solidarity and learned new aspects at the same time. We reflected on transference and counter transference in collective trauma and spoke about our own narratives.

Our FEPTO network group has supported our Ukrainian colleagues in two projects so far. Psychodrama with teenagers and the philosophy of war have been carried out as projects together with Ukrainian colleagues. Further projects are about to be realized.
The last few years have been very hard for children and young people. Recently many scientific articles showed results how much COVID-19 pandemic has influenced, overwhelmed and stressed out the children and the adolescents.

This will be one of the topics we will discuss at our next meeting in Lisbon on 02.02.2024 – 05.02.2024.

After 3 years of COVID-19 pandemic, we came together again and laughed, wept, dined, danced, enjoyed drinks, and learned a lot. Yes, traveling is exhausting and costs money, but we can only grow when our souls are really in touch with each other.

And finally,we would like to invite you to the 3rd International Conference on Psychodrama with Children and Adolescents! Here you will find all further information: https://3rdchildpsychodramaconf.com/

Thank you Moira and Bart for your hospitality, the spirit of Ghent will be with us.
Looking forward to meeting you in Lisbon in 2024!

Milena Mutafchieva, Stefan Flegelskamp
Download >Final program

In these difficult times, we managed to overcome barriers and to get in contact with each other. Of course, we would have much preferred to meet in Porto. Professional exchange, meeting valued colleagues and meeting in interesting places, that is what makes the FEPTO Network so lovable.

However, the pandemic forced us to the online format and to virtual meetings. Nevertheless, more than 60 colleagues from 16 countries exchanged ideas, gained important insights, and made decisions.

Our first topic was how to work online with children. Is therapy possible under these conditions? Many thanks to our Hungarian colleagues Eszter Forgács and Milan Katanics, who impressively described how they work online with children, even in a group setting.

The second important topic was the minimal training standards for child and adolescent psychodrama therapists. Already two years ago, a steering group was formed by Csilla Nemeth, Bea Pozsar, Milena Mutafchieva, Yiftach Ron, and Stefan Flegelskamp. This time we managed to formulate standards that correspond to those of adult psychodrama therapists. It is an absurdity that we still do not have regulations for child therapists. Together, and unanimously, we decided to present our proposal to the next FEPTO GA for voting.

Our last topic was psychodrama work with children and their parents: Family therapy meets psychodrama. There were 5 presentations on this topic. Special thanks to our Palestinian colleagues Enas. H. Jouda and Israa Al-Ebwini, who presented their therapeutic work in Gaza with families.

Online meetings, working with children and adolescents online, lack of standards, and then treating families and children together psychodramatically:  We have taken as a task to overcome what seemed to be obstacles and make connections.

Many thanks to all colleagues who have worked intensively on the success. Next year we will really meet in Porto 4th to 6th of February 2022. The main topic will be psychodrama and school.

Take care and stay negative!

Download >Full report (including wonderful pictures from the meeting!)

Milena Mutafchieva & Stefan Flegelskamp

We were very delighted to meet all 30 colleagues from 10 different countries at the 5^th network group meeting “Psychodrama with Children and Youth” which took place in Munich, Germany from 7th – 9th of February, 2020.

The following topics were discussed at the meeting

Research in Psychodrama with Children and Youth
Minimal Training Standards for Psychodrama with Children

Standards and research are hardly things that we find enjoyable and often they intimidate us. That is why we decided to start with this saying about courage. If we were to express this in the symbolic language suitable for children – Thirty fearless heroes have made their way into the valley of giant numbers and have proven that their magic is effective.

We all had the opportunity to spend a few exciting days in Munich and return home with new inspirations.
Our local host, Bettina and Thomas once again chose a beautiful venue with meaningful name. After ”The Temple of Peace “ in Cardiff, this time the name of the venue was “One world house”.

We would like to share two of the highlights of this network meeting. The first one was FEPTO executive board, who also visited us for dinner. Another high point was that Israa from Gaza was able to join us via Skype and present her extensive research on the topic.
Below you can find a short summary contributed by the presenters themselves:

Milena Mutafchieva, Kristina Gotseva-Balgaranova, Ivo Popivanov
Impact Evaluation of the Evidence-Based Trauma Stabilisation Programme for Refugee, Asylum Seeking and Immigrant Families (EBTS)

The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Evidence-Based Trauma Stabilisation (EBTS) Programme. The idea of the programme was born from the present need of more effective work with refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant families. The EBTS-Programme is based on a psychodrama-with-children approach, created by Aichinger and Holl (Aichinger & Holl, 2017) and is suitable for parent-child pairs. The study has a within-subject design with two measurements: pre-test before the attendance in the programme and post-test after the completion of the programme. The psychological instruments, administered in order to measure the effectiveness of the intervention, assessed PTSD symptoms and the level of depression in both children and parents. Fifteen children and 16 mothers from Germany and Bulgaria participated in the study. The results showed significant decrease in PTSD intrusion, PTSD arousal, depression, and dissociation in children. There is a decrease in all scales in the mothers’ results but it did not reach significance. Only one decrease is significant: mothers were more likely to share problems concerning their children after the intervention.

Anna Hajdu
The impact of child psychodrama in 5 groups

The creation of a special method of child psychodrama has been the fruit of recent decades. It is a therapeutic method that communicates with children in the language of play, facilitates their ability to connect, works with spontaneity and originality, which releases children’s creativity and leads to self-healing (Aichinger, 2002). There are not many studies regarding the effects of this method, more research has been launched in recent years, but they are still under development.

Method: Five child psychodrama groups participated in the study, with 6-8 children per group, operating under the aegis of one organization. As part of the impact assessment, children completed the following questionnaire at the start of the groups and 20 times later (app. 6 months later): Semantic Selection Test (Szabó, Németh, Nafrádi, 2013), Emotion Measurement Scale (Nagy, 2010) and Rosenberg Self-Assessment Scale (Sallay et al., 2014). Thus, the focus of the study was on the development and change of social skills and self-esteem.

Results: Higher values for emotional intelligence can be reported from follow-up studies, and the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-esteem was confirmed. The concept of “myself” and “expression of emotion” proved to be a constant feeling of positive joy, and at the time of follow-up, these concepts were less related to the feeling of fear. And as a result of the child psychodrama sessions, the feeling of fear about self-protection diminished, which means that the thought of self-defense was less and less colored by fear after the sessions. The research could not confirm the positive change in self-esteem.

Conclusion: According to the results, the child psychodrama method effectively contributes to the development of children, both socially and emotionally. It strengthens and supports them to be less afraid when they stand up for themselves, and effectively supports the development of adequate behavior in different social situations.

Dagmar Mingers, Heidi Schaul, Anna-Lotte Kopatz
Summary Research “Pretend we´d make it together”- The Impact of Psychodrama for Children on their Emotional Competences- Psychodrama Groups an Evaluation of the Effectiveness

Our research is aimed at the question whether a psychodrama group for children of pre-school age can improve emotional skills, which are a good predictor for lifetime mental health, success and happiness. Our practice-oriented outcome-study which included two rounds of psychodrama groups and control groups with (deep psychological group therapy) and without treatment results in the confirmation of our hypothesis that participation in psychodrama group therapy significantly improves the emotional skills of the children.

Csilla Nemeth

Proposing SAI-R (Revised Spontaneity Assessment Inventory) as a tool to assess the effect of psychodrama with adolescents. I talked about Revised Spontaneity Assessment Inventory (SAI-R) test, introduced by Kipper et al. in 2006, to measure spontaneity, the key element of psychodrama, by a self-report questionnaire. The test was translated, and validated in several countries, showed positive correlation e.g. with well-being (CORE-OM), and negative correlation with depression (Beck depression scale). It is easy to use, takes no more than 1-2 minutes to fill out, and it was also validated for adolescents.

It shows promise to be a useful tool in longitudinal studies also to measure the effect of psychodrama based on a Portuguese and our own Hungarian small scale studies in adults.

Fabian Blobel
“Which theoretical models (about development, groups and psychodrama) should be included in the trainings for PD with children and/or adolescents?”
An invitation to a discussion on minimal training standards

“The invitation for the discussion” about the content in the training for psychodrama with youth, was led by action sociometry in six steps. By this, the questions, which theoretical aspects should be included as minimal training standards could be discussed actively in a short time within the whole group. The range between extreme poles allowed to form subgroups and a stimulating exchange within.

The steps where formed by the differentiation between pedagogic and therapeutic settings, Individual versus Group settings, developmental and pathological aspects, the different approaches to healing and human being and technical content as presentations, thesis, exams or research. Also the question if the formation should include children and adolescents could be discussed.

With the presentation the big need and wish of the group for exchange about minimal training standards of content found a little frame. Because of the magnitude of this topic it was clear from the beginning, that the intervention could just be an invitation for a discussion. To be continued.

Israa Shehada Al-Ebwini from Gaza – VIA Skype
Effectiveness of psychodrama to reduce Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms (PTSS) among Gaza children (8-10 years)

The qualitative part of this research shows how the roles of traumatized children developed from avoidant helpless roles to be powerful and competent roles. Also shows how the traumatized children express recurrent act of Intrusion and arousal symptoms throw their roles, and how psychodrama can help. An observation card developed to be used by the caregivers\mothers to monitor the progress of the child changes on mood and behavior. Also the caregivers\mothers have to report some significant situations and how they respond immediately and how they planned to respond in the future. Every two weeks the observation card discussed between caregivers and therapist during the psychodrama process. This helped to sustain the positive impact of psychodrama sessions and increased the relationship and secure attachment between child and mother/caregiver.

Minimal training standards

Concerning the topic of Minimal training standards, all participants agreed with the proposal of the steering group that the minimum training standards that apply to psychodrama training for adults must also be valid for child psychodramatists. In addition, we want to discuss the division of training hours further at the next network meeting.

Looking to the future

• Milena Mutafchieva will organize the 3^rd International Conference for Psychodrama with Children and Youth in Bulgaria in 2022. Milena will also be the co – facilitator of this network group together with Stefan.
• We would like to thank Hilde Gött for all she has done for this network group!
• The next network meeting will take place from 5^th to 7^th of February 2021 in the beautiful City of Porto (Portugal). Our local host will be Dr. Joanna Saraiva.

And going back to the beginning, remember that Fortune favors the brave.
Warmest regards,
Milena & Stefan

Download >Report

We could hardly find a better place in Europe for a meeting of children and youth psychodrama therapists than Wales – the land of myths, fairy tales and heroic legends.

During the meeting preparation, and after analyzing the process of the working group until now, we decided to change the concept and the content of these meetings and take the next step. In previous meetings, we have presented workshops of the psychodramatic ways of working with children and adolescents. These meetings were gradually transformed into small conferences with more than 80 participants. We have played a lot together and learned about each other. However, the time to be “grown-ups” has come and we decided to tackle the standards that psychodramatists need to fulfill in order to use our powerful method with children and adolescents.

The meeting was opened by a beautifully singing children’s band, Polyphonic¸ who opened our ears, eyes and hearts. They sang in Welsh and English.

Craig Stevens invited us to Cardiff and we met in a marvelous historical place named the Temple of Peace. Craig designed the warm up, including typical myths of the region. In the roles of kings, wolves, fairies, lovers, lakes, castles and apple trees, we joined together and got to know each other better.

17 participants from 9 countries came together to start this admittedly not so exciting work.

At the beginning, Kate Kirk presented results from the 3^rd cycle of her research work entitled “The International Landscape of Psychodrama Psychotherapy with Young People”. She studies intensively difficult questions such as how do psychodramatists work with children and adolescents in Europe and FEPTO, what kind of settings and interventions do they use; are they trained professionally and do we need standards for this training in Europe? She used the Delphi cycle to collect data and to analyze it; she is entering the 4th and final cycle.  She told us about the range of specialised training for working with young people her respondents had done; it ranged from no additonal training to well structured training that focussed on the developmental and different needs of children and young people.

Thank you, Kate for this very important work for all of us.

Saturday was marked by the presentations. Csilla Nemeth and Bea Pozsar presented the training standards at Hanna Kende’s Institute, which are accepted by the Hungarian Psychodramatic Association. Then Ivana Jurić presented the standards of the Centers of Psychodrama in Croatia. Stefan Flegelskamp presented the standards of the German umbrella organization for psychodrama (DFP), which are currently being carried out by the Szenen Institute in Cologne and the Moreno Institute Stuttgart. At the end of the day, Milena Mutafchieva presented The Minimum Training Standards of FEPTO. To the great satisfaction of all those involved, we found out that we use the same standards for PD with children training in the three countries and that they are equal or even higher than Training standards for psychodrama with adults.  On Sunday, Angela Sordano, a Jungian psychodramatist, led us to an excellent evaluation, building on the roles of the Welsh fairy tale and relating it to the process of the group.

Summary of the results from the meeting:

• We created a steering group that will continue to work on PD with Children and Youth training standards until the next meeting in February 2020. The group members are as follows: Csilla Nemeth, and Bea Pozsar from Hungary, Milena Mutafchieva from Bulgaria, Yiftach Ron from Israel and Stefan Flegelskamp from Germany.
• The next network meeting will take place from 7.02-9.02.2020 in Munich. Our hosts are Thomas Niedermeier and Bettina Menzel
• The children and adolescents psychodrama should become more visible at the next FEPTO conference in Tallinn and we intend to propose a small group topic and to apply for the poster session.
• We decided to establish a new intervision group for children and adolescents psychodrama trainers and its first meeting will be on 06.02.2020 in Munich.
• The main topic of the next meeting in Munich will be:

Please, keep in mind that the next International Psychodrama with Children and Youth Conference will take place in  Zagreb 25th until 27th of September 2020

Download >Report

Stefan Flegelskamp & Milena Mutafchieva
s-flegelskamp@t-online.de

When we chose this topic “Trauma and Resilience”, nobody could imagine how serious the dynamics regarding our topic would be.
18 participants from 8 different European countries accepted the invitation to revive the network group “Psychodrama with children and youth”. What a great response and success for the organisers Hilde Gött and Fabian Blobbel as the local hosts and Stefan Flegelskamp  in the role as FEPTO-facilitator, who organised this meeting together.

The first “simple” sociometric warm up question; ”where are you from?” showed, how the immigration issue arose in each person in our group. Many group members had their own history of moving from one country to another and had suffered isolation and reclusion.

Gisela Scheef-Maier from the Centre for Victims of Torture in Berlin presented her work and gave a lecture and overview about the current development in Berlin. Many refugees are totally frustrated after arriving in Germany without hope and with unrealistic future plans. Her personal point of view was pessimistic concerning the expectations in Germany.

The Saturday morning started with Stefan Flegelskamp introducing the German approach, Psychodrama-group-therapy with children developed by Alfons Aichinger. Afterwards he explained the “Defense Cascade” of traumatic experience, and what it means in the daily life of children suffering from posttraumatic symptoms. Finally he demonstrated how he played with traumatised children (pirates) under consideration of perpetrator introject and permission to defend oneself.

After the lunch break Angela Sordano from Torino explained her Jungian analysis approach connected with Morenian psychodrama and group analytical concept. She used symbolic scripts of the group and created together with the children inter- subjective connection without individual interpretations. She   divides the therapeutic room in three spaces; for representation, for drawing and for sharing. At the starting phase Angela used mostly fairy tales; later on in the group process self-made stories. While playing a story the director is doubling from time to time, in order to make sure certain things are done. With a ritual the children jump back to the drawing space after the playing period. The children are invited to draw or to say what touched them in the story. Thus Angela explored the relationships in the group. She demonstrated by using the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” some intervention possibilities with traumatised children or youth.
A long day ended with a concrete counseling on how to found a new group with refugee children in Munich and some ideas on how to work with adolescents.

On Sunday Zsofia Tölg-Molnar and Pozsar Bea from Hungary presented the approach developed by Kende Hanna. She connects individual (Adlerian) therapy with psychodrama. She used a lot of stories, but not real fairy tales, called focus stories, developed by the psychodrama institute for children therapists in Budapest. This information was new for many participants so we decided to visit Budapest next time and Bea and Zsofia will be our next hosts.

After a short discussion we decided to revive the network group Psychodrama with Children and Youth under the umbrella of FEPTO. Stefan and Hilde will be the contact persons for FEPTO and Stefan will take the role as a facilitator/ moderator of this group.
We plan to meet once a year; next time in the beginning of February in Budapest. We have also decided to try to organize an international Psychodrama Conference for Children and Youth in Budapest 2018. We have also started to think about publishing a book on Psychodrama with Children and Youth containing all the different approaches to working with children and youth and psychodrama.

Everybody left this first networking meeting enthusiastic and full of new ideas. Every participant wants to come back and continue in this group.

Download >report

Stefan Flegelskamp
s-flegelskamp@t-online.de