Play Therapy: A Crucial Approach in Children's Mental Health

Children are the most precious resource of a nation and its legacy to the future. Yet is is estimated that in this country over 10 million children are suffering from some form of emotional distress, of whom only 7 percent are receiving any kind of help (Kalkman, 1976). Since the onset of major mental illness may occur as early as 7 to 11 years old, it is not only important to treat those children to preventing them from becoming deviant adults but to do so properly. Counselors who work with children should be trained in therapeutic techniques that are specifically aimed at help children. Techniques used with adults will prove to be unsuccessful when used with children under the age of 12. One of the most preferred approach includes using play activities. And it also believed that, although unconventional children may benefit from the use of humor during therapy. The most agreed upon technique used when counseling children is play. Play activities is as important in child counseling as verbal communication is in counseling adults (Pothier,1976). Play is a child’s natural method of self-expression and communication. A vast majority of young child’s free time is spent in play through which he (sic) explores

It has been suggested that play therapy is facilitated with children as young as four years of age ( Dimick & Huff,1970). My suggestion for future research would be to study which toys work best in counseling for either age from 4 - 11 or for each age group. Also the piece of literature I found on using humor in counseling session was the only one I could find. So I could only assume that the research on using humor is sparse. So I believe that that would be a good thing to conduct further research on. And again on its effectiveness on the different age groups. Likewise the effectiveness of other seemingly unconventional methods such as dance/movement