¿Es posible la atención psicoterapéutica para todos en las instituciones públicas de Salud Mental Infanto-Juvenil? Experiencia a través de grupos multifamiliares en el Área de Salud Mental Infanto-Juvenil de Orihuela (Alicante, España)

Nowadays more and more professionals of mental health area are becoming aware that individual treatment for children and adolescents with psychological, emotional or behavioral problems is obviously not enough and this is why they are starting to intervene in the underlying family dynamics in order to promote change. In the same way, group therapy experiences are spreading among child and adolescent mental health centers as an alternative to individual approach, after verifying that working simultaneously in the same therapeutic space with several people has a greater therapeutic power and turns up to show a better utilization of resources. Having as a point of start both therapeutic models – group and family therapy – a group of professionals working in the province of Alicante has decided to combined these two models into what is known as multifamily therapy in a interfamily approach, a model that has become the backbone of child and adolescent mental health activities in the institution. Here this model is analyzed as well as the experience inside the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Area of Orihuela (Alicante). Finally, the potentiality of becoming a reference model for other institutions is discussed.