Regulation-focused psychotherapy for children in medical education: An account from the perspective of men's mental health

Male toddlers, preschool- and school-aged boys, male adolescents, and young male adults often react to trauma and other adverse life experiences with externalizing behaviors. This constellation of presentation and means of interpersonal relating are highly specific to Men's Mental Health. Often, the raw aggression in these presentations can be off-putting or even disturbing to mental health professionals, especially those who have yet to build confidence through gained experience in working with male youth. This may be particularly true with prospective mental health professionals, including medical students. There is a large literature documenting the difficulties of recruitment of medical students into child and adolescent psychiatry. These Men's Mental Health issues may be a contributing factor to this long-standing problem. This paper describes the value to the medical student experience of the perspective of Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children, a short-term psychotherapeutic approach targeting externalizing behaviors through a means of attempting to understand the meaning of the behaviors in lieu of coercive control or management. A vignette involving one medical student's experience in working with a male child through this framework is provided and areas for further study outlined.