Online Therapy for Children: The Mediation in Cultural-Historical Psychotherapy with Children in a Pandemic Context

Abstract

This article presents theoretical discussions and clinical practice based on the experience of online clinical sessions for children centered on the Cultural-Historical Psychology approach. The experience was set with patients from ages as of 4 to 11 years old, from the Hospital São Paulo and it took place at the Children’s Mental Health Sector of the Department of Pediatrics (UNIFESP), at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the sanitary urgency of isolation, which made necessary the restriction of the outpatient care, the sector chose to attend to those patients via video calls. New mediation resources using technological and digital instruments had to be developed in order to continue Play Therapy on online sessions. As a result, Vygotsky’s theory and his collaborators helped to expand the usual techniques and the approach of children online therapy, necessary to continue their mental health care in the pandemic context.