E D I T O R I A L
Centrum Hecht
Book cover illustration
For the book “Working with Developmental Trauma: A casebook for Mentalizing-Based Treatment for children and their families” by Nicole Muller, Emma Moris and Nick Midgley and published by Routeledge in 2025, I was asked to make the cover illustration.
We often don't realise it, but we spend all day explaining our own and others' behaviour by imagining what we ourselves and others think, feel, want, and mean. This tendency is also called mentalising, a unique characteristic of human beings.
Childhood trauma has been described as “psychiatry’s greatest public health challenge” (Sara and Lappin, 2017). Developmental trauma is a common risk factor in a broad range of mental health disorders, so early intervention and treatment is a priority. Yet those professionals providing support for these children often struggle to identify effective ways of working, or models that can help them to make sense of the complex range of issues these children and their families often face. This book will offer a valuable resource for mental health professionals, providing an opportunity to learn about the techniques of mentalization-based treatment in working with school-age children who have experienced developmental trauma.
For the cover illustration I visualised maintenance on a communication line. In this case a line between two cans that children sometimes playfully use to communicate over a distance.