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Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents
Research shows that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14.1 Scientists are discovering that changes in the body leading to mental illness may start much earlier, before any symptoms appear. Through greater understanding of when and how fast specific areas of children’s...
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Obtaining Judicial Authorization to Medicate a Minor
A decision to give a child powerful psychotropic medication is a difficult one, fraught with uncertainty and is often viewed as the lesser of two evils. While the administration of medication to a child is itself a complicated decision the stakes are raised if either the child or the parents do not...
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Evidence-Based Practices in a Community-Based Children’s Summer Therapeutic Program: 33 Days to a Better Level of Functioning
This article will describe the synergy derived from bringing an evidence-based curriculum into a summer therapeutic day-camp for children diagnosed as severely emotionally disturbed. What child doesn’t look forward to summer vacation from school? And what child doesn’t anticipate attending a...
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Sustainability for Systems of Care
When Orange County, NY received a “System of Care” grant in October 2008, our community set out on a collaborative and ambitious journey to transform the way we care for youth with serious mental health challenges, and their families. Since 1993, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services...
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Are Psychiatric Disorders Over-diagnosed in Children? Are Medicines Over-prescribed? 13 Myths & Facts
Headlines scream that too many kids are taking Ritalin or Adderall or whatever the latest ADHD medicine du jour is. TV’s talking heads complain that we’re drugging our kids with Prozac, Zoloft and other “dangerous drugs.” But your child’s teacher recommends your child be “evaluated”...
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Activities in Group Work with Children and Adolescents
The use of physical, and other, activities in group work is more than a “tool,” more than programmed content, more than “canned” exercises, and more than a mechanistic means to an end. Group work scholar Ruth Middleman aptly described the “toolness of program more as putty than a hammer,...
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Helping Children Come to Terms with Sexual Abuse
The classic definition of “trauma” provided by Bessel Vander Kolk (1987) includes both the dramatic nature of an event as well as the individual’s ability to cope. Despite our capacity to survive and adapt, trauma can alter one’s psychological, biological and social equilibrium to such a...
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Principles of Group Work with Children and Youth Trauma Survivors
Group work is indispensable for children and youth in the aftermath of traumatic events. Group work can serve as a counterforce to bleak outcomes that result from isolation in the aftermath of disaster. It can help to empower young people by restoring human dignity, building coping skills, helping...
