Children and Mental Health Talk: Perspectives on Social Competence, edited by Joyce Lamerichs, Susan Danby, Amanda Bateman and Stuart Ekberg, is quite literally a book about mental health talk. The book features eight chapters relating to research into children’s interactions and social competence in various institutional settings, with the focus being on conversation analysis. As the words, tone, pause and speed of conversations is analyzed, it is important for the reader to familiarize themselves with the implementation of the transcript provided in the beginning of the book. Chapter one begins as an introduction into engaging with children as professionals when eliciting talk about traumatic events, with a focus on building a foundation and rapport. Chapter eight ends with an epilogue about mental health talk and how the chapters in the book offer insight to children’s competence and interactional encounters. Each chapter also concludes with a professional reflection regarding the  information.

Even though the overall theme of the book is that of mental health talk with young children using conversation analysis, the most efficient way of describing the content is perhaps by briefly describing each chapter as they are distinct from one another and provide much insight into professional discussions with children about mental health.

In chapter two – Testing Children’s Degrees and Domains of Social Competence in Child Mental Health Assessments, the focus is on exploring the social competence of children through the use of mental health assessments. In conversation with youth it is important to pursue further elaboration by engaging youth, allowing youth to answer questions, asking for elaboration, and probing for the youth’s understanding of a particular issue. It is also essential to take note of the language used by the youth, thus seeking competence from the youth. Competencies can be negotiated, rejected, confirmed, anticipated, projected, displayed, partial, full. 

 Chapter three – The Social Organization of Echolalia in Clinical Encounters Involving a Child Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, focuses on the use of Echolalia, which is the repeating of words or phrases. Echolalia is a common speech pattern for youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The interactional functions of echolalia speech pattern was examined in clinical sessions with youth. Immediate echolalia (repeating words heard in the moment) serves as an interactional resource for youth. As such, four main patterns were found; repetition of a prior question, repetition of a question followed by an answer, repeating a question several times and repetition within the assessment-agreement sequence. The authors determined that youth can show clear competency of a task when using echolalia. 

Chapter four – Initiating Earthquake Talk with Young Children: Children’s Social Competence and the Use of Resources, may at first-hand seem like a peculiar topic to discuss with young children. However, put into perspective, this research was conducted after the aftermath of a very large earthquake in Christchurch, New Zeeland. The chapter focuses on how to initiate talking about trauma with young children and how to manage such conversations through the use of resources and play. The emphasis is on how youth engage with others through interactions, as well as the words they use when playing and engaging each other. Teachers and children used firsthand knowledge, stories, the recalling experiences and play when talking about the traumatic experiences of the earthquake.

In chapter 5 – Misleading the Alleged Offender: Child Witnesses’ Displays of Competence in Police Interviews, the authors analyze police interrogations with youth victims of sexual offenses. One particular point of interest was the victim’s attempt to mislead the alleged offender in order to end the abuse. The youth in the interviews were therefore showing competence in their accounts of resistance. Youth reported doing so by misleading the alleged offender in instances when saying no is difficult or feels impossible. The authors note that children should not be held responsible for not overtly saying no and should not be blamed. The children showed active resistance in their attempts to mislead through the use of words.  

Chapter 6 – Children’s Competence and Wellbeing in Sensitive Research: When Video-Stimulated Accounts Lead to Dispute, discusses the use of video-stimulate conversation in a group of young females’ playground actions using the ethnomethodological approach. The female youth displayed strategic discussions when faced with disagreement and complaints. The girls did so by talking about the “offender” in their presence, discussing rules, and the implementation or disregard of those rules, in public. In this way, the children enforced their own social position within the group but were also able to view and discuss their own video recorded interactions with others.

In Chapter 7 – ‘Well I Had Nothing Weird Going On’: Children’s Displays of Social Competence in Psychological Research Interviews, the focus is on interactions between youth and professionals. The children interviewed displayed interactional practices and social competence when discussing loss and/or trauma. In this case, the children interviewed had experienced the loss of a family member or had been the victim of sexual assault. The results of the study indicated that the children used three ways of “doing being ordinary” (normalizing the event) by downgrading the event, resisting that the event had changed them and presenting normative accounts as having recovered from the event.

Children and Mental Health Talk is an interesting read, even if the reader is not very familiar with conversation analysis. It takes some time to get used to the transcription of the recorded conversations, but the analysis of the conversations is fascinating to read. It is also noteworthy that the focus is on youth, and sometimes quite young children, which is significant.  Especially so as adults may have an inclination to disregard or downplay the importance of youth’s interactions and social competence with each other and with adults.

Hennie Weiss has a master’s degree in Sociology from CSUS and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Social Work from CSUS. Her academic interests also include women’s studies and feminism.