Rational-Emotive Assessment of School Aged Children

This article focuses on the assessment of emotions and irrational beliefs in Rational-Emotive Therapy with school-aged children. It is argued that for children to understand and agree to the process of disputing irrational beliefs, the practitioner first assesses the individual child's emotional vocabulary, his/her understanding of the relationship between the disturbed emotion and the referral problem, as well as the child's conceptualization of the emotional goals of the therapy. Assessment of these factors will help the practitioner plan which elements need to be included in the treatment plan. In addition, several strategies are reviewed for the assessment of automatic thoughts and irrational beliefs. The advantage of these for the practitioner are discussed and recommendations are made as to which strategies are most efficient.