Childhood, Well-Being and a Therapeutic Ethos

A key theme of this book is that we urgently need a therapeutic ethos in order to bring both educational and therapeutic sensibilities to bear on the issue of children's wellbeing, if truly effective and appropriate policy responses to the current malaise are to be fashioned. Not least, we must pay particular attention to childhood experience, showing that scientific and technical developments are always secondary to the resources of the human soul, if we are to minimize the extent to which today's children will need therapy as adults. This will entail moving beyond narrowly mechanistic definitions of, and ways of thinking about, "well-being" and the psychological therapies. This book offers pointers to the kinds of arguments that can inform what is rapidly becoming a central concern of politicians and policy-makers.