Story stem narratives with young children: moving to clinical research and practice.

Story stem narrative methods have demonstrated reliability and validity as assessments of the young child's representations of parent - child and peer relationships. Most, but not all, prior research has been conducted with samples of typically developing children. Growing interest in the method from clinical researchers and child psychiatry clinics brings forward a number of critical issues in its use with children referred for severe behavioural disruption and mood disorder. This special issue of Attachment & Human Development provides a collection of papers that demonstrates some of the unique theoretical contributions of the method for clinical research. Practical aspects of using story stem methods with the referred child are also considered.