Mentalization-Based Treatment for Children

Nick Midgley, PhD, is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and professor of psychological therapies with children and young people at University College London and the Anna Freud Centre in London, where he is the director of the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit. Nick has been involved in the development of mentalization-based treatments for children and families and has a particular interest in evaluating therapy for children in foster care.

Karin Ensink, PhD, is a professor of child and adolescent psychology at the University Laval in Quebec, Canada, and teaches mentalization-based therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and parents. She completed her PhD under the direction of Mary Target and Peter Fonagy. Her research and clinical work focuses on the development and assessment of mentalization in children, adolescents, and parents. She has a particular interest in understanding failures of mentalization in the context of parent-child interactions, and in how these failures relate to psychopathology, personality, and treatment.

Karin Lindqvist, MSc, is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a PhD in clinical psychology from Stockholm University. She is trained in mentalization-based work with children (MBT-C) and parents at the Erica Foundation in Stockholm. Karin’s research concerns different areas of psychodynamic psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and adults.

Norka Malberg, PhD, is an adult, child, and adolescent psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who trained at the Anna Freud Centre in London and the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute in New Haven, Connecticut. She obtained her clinical doctorate at University College London. She is an assistant clinical professor at Yale’s Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, and clinical instructor at the FundaciÓn Vidal y Barraquer Institute of Ramon Lllul University in Barcelona, Spain. She is the founder and director of IMAGINA: Centro de Aplicaciones de la MentalizaciÓn in Barcelona, Spain, a teaching and private practice organization.

Nicole Muller, MSc, is a child and adolescent psychotherapist and family therapist at Centrum Hecht in Holland, a specialist centre for the treatment of children, youth, and their families with attachment and trauma problems. She is a mentalization-based treatment (MBT) practitioner with children and young people (CYP) and a supervisor and trainer for the Anna Freud Centre in London. With her colleagues, she runs Centrum Hecht Opleidingen in Holland, a training center specializing in MBT-CYP. She has written many articles on MBT and is co-editor of Mentalization-Based Treatment for Developmental Trauma: A Casebook for Working with Children and Their Families (2025).