The Future of Play Therapy: Elevating Credibility Through Play Therapy Research

Abstract

Elevating credibility in play therapy through research has been a difficult task. This difficulty is represented well in the Myth of Sisyphus (wherein Sisyphus is cursed with the mandate of rolling a large boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down every time he approaches the top of the hill). Play therapy, in some form, has been in mental health clinics, clinician's offices, and in journals for more than a century-yet empirical research on play therapy has consistently lagged behind practice. Also, we have several decades of research supporting the use of play therapy in addressing many common childhood problems, yet there is little recognition of play therapy as an "empirically supported treatment." To stretch the Myth of Sisyphus just a bit, if we are to see the effort to develop empirical support for play therapy as our task, we need to look carefully at who is pushing the boulder, what strategies are being used to get the boulder up the hill, and how we will we know when we've reached the top of the hill. © 2010 Association for Play Therapy.