Mentalizing – attending to mental states in oneself and others in order to understand intention and behaviour – has been described as ‘the most fundamental common factor among psychotherapeutic techniques’. It is the basis of mentalization based therapy, which aims to reduce emotional and behavioural difficulties for children, adolescents and adults, who are often parents.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is an evidence based intervention, which has been used to treat depression across the lifespan, from mothers struggling to bond with their new born child, preadolescents and adolescents with depression and anxiety to parents with depression whose children are attending mental health services.

The integration of these approaches has gained considerable attention in recent years because of their shared interest in the nature and significance of interpersonal interactions and their role in the evolution and maintenance of mental health difficulties. In the UK, the use of mentalization based techniques is a formal part of the Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A) curriculum in a national training programme for the children and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) workforce. This is an opportunity, in the words of Peter Fonagy, one of the originators of MBT, to make IPT the best IPT it can be.