This paper reports on associations observed between Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs) obtained from adoptive mothers, and emotional themes appearing in doll play narratives obtained from their recently adopted children. The children, aged 4 -8 years, carried into their adoptive placements a history of consistently serious maltreatment, including neglect and abuse. Results reveal strong and significant influences of maternal state of mind regarding attachment upon their adopted children's storycompletions. Mothers whose AAIs were judged insecure (either dismissing or preoccupied) were likely to have adopted children who, three months after placement, provided story-completions with higher levels of aggressiveness as compared to the stories provided by children adopted by mothers with secure-autonomous AAIs. Children whose adoptive mothers provided AAIs indicative of unresolved (as opposed to resolved) mourning regarding past loss or trauma provided story completions with higher scores for emotional themes such as 'parent appearing child-like' and 'throwing out or throwing away'. Results also include a qualitative section that provides narrative excerpts of maternal AAIs and children's story-completions. Discussion concerns the contribution these findings make to the literature on intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns, and the implications these findings have for child clinical work and social policy.

Children who develop their 'internal working models' of attachment in situations of neglect or abuse, carry the effects of these models into new placements if they are then adopted or fostered. This article reports on the assessment of these effects using the story stem technique, which provides children with a way of displaying their expectations and perceptions of attachment figures using both verbal and non-verbal means of representation. An outline of the story stem assessment technique is given, and the 'Little Pig' stems and a summary of the rating system are presented. The article then reports preliminary findings from a larger ongoing research project, comparing themes in the stories of previously maltreated children placed for adoption with those of a group of children adopted in the first year of life, and using the technique to track changes in the children's attachment representations, and some other aspects of their 'internal working models', over the first year of placement in their new families.

BackgroundResearch shows us that auditory hallucinations or ‘hearing voices’ may be more common than previously thought, particularly in childhood and adolescents. Importantly, not all individuals are affected negatively by their voice hearing experiences, yet child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) have traditionally understood voice hearing as a symptom of psychosis and severe mental illness, with implications for the way interventions are offered. The purpose of the present study was to gain an understanding of how young people who hear voices and their families find engaging with mental health service, and to better understand their experience of mental health professionals.MethodsA two-stage, mixed methods study was used. In the first stage, semi-structured interviews were carried out with two young people and their parents who had engaged with mental health services, and the collected data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). In the second stage, a questionnaire was designed to test the generalizability of the themes arising from the first stage, and was completed online by 32 young voice hearers and 27 parents.ResultsIPA analysis produced 4 themes: (1) The struggle to understand the hearing voices phenomenon; (2) Battle with the Mental Health Services; (3) ‘Stuck in a limbo’; and (4) The wish for a more holistic approach from mental health services and professionals. The survey partially confirmed the findings of study one, with young people and parents finding useful information difficult to come by, and many reported feeling lost in CAMHS. Additionally, young voice hearers and parents often felt not listened to, and many parents expressed the need for a holistic care, whilst young people wanted a more normalizing and less stigmatizing experience.ConclusionsYoung people and their families had varying experiences of mental health services. Whilst the survey showed that some young people and their families had more positive experiences, many expressed dissatisfaction. To fulfil the needs of young people and their families, mental health services would benefit from developing alternative approaches to voice hearing and running support groups that could form part of a ‘normalising’ and ‘holistic care’ package.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-014-0527-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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