All the Rage: Best Practice for Helping Adolescent Girls in Crisis

Location:  Billerica, MA - Courtyard by Marriott, Billerica

Many adolescent girls today are in a crisis of rage and despair. Some try to disappear through starvation, others carve indecipherable symbols onto their arms or run away from home, still others bully and get bullied, hide weeping in their rooms, or attempt suicide. How can practitioners become more effective with this volatile population?

This highly practical workshop will explore 15 vital principles underlying effective practice with adolescent girls ages 11-22. It will offer concrete strategies and methods for helping girls in crisis and examine the limitations of old standards of care, such as self-harm contracts and confidentiality rules. You'll learn what questions to ask and how to rally support for the girls from their extended family and relationship networks. You'll also find out about a variety of practical strategies that help, including persona work, harm reduction, inviting resistance, and developing a protective circle of adults.

You'll hear about interventions specifically addressing two of the most vexing problems encountered by all practitioners working with adolescent girls: self-harm and social aggression and learn how to include girls' voices in discussions of sex and sexuality. You'll learn what it takes to stay connected to these struggling adolescents as you help them become competent, inter-dependent young women. Workshop participants will:

• Read the subtext of provocative, self-destructive, and confusing behaviors
• Identify a protective circle of adults around troubled girls
• Describe 15 principles of effective practice with adolescent girls
• Interview and intervene in the most stressful cases including, self-injury and social aggression

This workshop will have relevance for community mental health and social service agencies, educators and school counselors, therapists (social workers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists) working in and out patient in private practice, clergy, child protection workers, juvenile justice, residential treatment and home-based providers. Workshop format includes lecture, discussion, and case examples.

Instructor:

Martha Straus, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England Graduate School and adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. She maintains a private practice and consults to schools, social service agencies and courts. Dr. Straus is the author of numerous articles and four books including No-Talk Therapy for Children and Adolescents, Violence in the Lives of Adolescents, and most recently, Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Intervention and Hope. Blending evidence-based practices, case examples, and a wry humor, Dr. Straus trains and conducts workshops internationally.