Preliminary adjustment of family alliance assessment scales to adolescence phase.

Introduction: we present the first qualitative steps in the adaptation and validation of an observational tool for father-mother-infant interactions in adolescence. It develops from the Lausanne Trilogue Play application (Fivaz-Depeursinge and Corboz-Warnery, 1999) to adolescent patients in a Neuropsychiatric Unit for Children and Adolescents project: ―LTP used as a psychodiagnostic and therapeutic tool for psychiatric children and adolescents‖. Our aim is to find out relevant changes to the LTP and to the Family Alliance Assessment Scales (FAAS 6.3, Favez, Lavanchy Scaiola, Tissot, Darwiche, Frascarolo, 2011) in order to fit families with adolescents interactive peculiarities. Methods: 66 families with pre-adolescents (n = 34, 11-14 years old) and adolescents (n = 32, 15-18 years old). Observation and study of relevant communication skills, non verbal language and interactive dynamics in adolescence. Adjustment of setting, activity and scoring system. Results: setting change only for the presence of the table between the family partners. Concerning to the activity it seems that a conversational theme as weekend organization or birthday party involve all the families partners. Analysing each LTP variables we have noticed that for some of these it seems to be important to insert some additional declaration in the coding system. In particular for ―postures and looks‖ both for the presence of the table and in line with adolescent communication and non- verbal signals; for ―roles‖ in line with the more active contribution of the adolescent to the activity and to the family system than the infant do; ―co-construction and scaffolding‖ variables characteristics are modulated to adolescents peculiarities focusing both on verbal and non-verbal language. Finally a deep discussion is emerged about the modulation of affective variables concerning to the high level of conflict, a central characteristic of individuation-separation process in adolescence. Conclusions: preliminary statistical analysis for the validation of this scoring system are in process.