Renee Thurston
Child and Adolescent, Parent-Infant Psychotherapist
With more than 20 years’ experience in child psychology and psychotherapy, Renee is qualified across the range of presenting disorders, working with severely disabled children, children with ADHD, autism, eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorders, and challenging behaviour of all kinds, including disruptive behaviour at school or in the family context. Having spent many years working in hospital baby units, special schools, and nurseries, she is also an expert in parent-infant mental health and possesses acute observational skills in this area.
Highly experienced in child assessment, Renee brings a wealth of knowledge to the discernment and delivery of effective intervention across the range of available options. These include short-term, long-term, family, individual and couple psychotherapy, and parent-child psychotherapy, using psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural, and other evidence-based techniques, depending on the historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual or individuals concerned.
Renee works with many different types of families, including single parents, blended families, separated families, same-sex couples, IVF families, and their wider social networks. She believes in the importance of engaging parents, family, and the wider professional community in the delivery of successful treatment outcomes.
BA, MSc, D Ch Psych
Renee qualified as a child psychologist and completed an MA in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies before her training at the Tavistock Clinic as a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor. Renee is also trained as a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, providing psychodynamic couple therapy that supports the individual work of one or both members of the couple, including couple therapy for depression in the perinatal period.
Renee is a VIG, video interaction guidance practitioner and supervisor and has successfully used VIG method in her work with children and their families. She has subsequently worked in a wide variety of clinical and social settings, from hospitals to schools to outpatient clinics. She has been continuously involved in child psychotherapeutic assessment and treatment for over 20 years. She has worked at the Special Care Baby Unit at North Middlesex Hospital, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Royal Free Hospital, the Parent-Infant Mental Health Perinatal Service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and various other Specialist Hospitals and Schools, amassing a vast amount of experience in working therapeutically with infants, parents, and young children. She has also played a central role in carrying out expert witness assessments for court cases involving infants and children. Renee undertakes specialist teaching work in parent-infant and nursery-child observations at the Anna Freud Centre and the Tavistock Clinic in London.