Family Therapy for Depressed and Suicidal Adolescents

Training Options Duration: 60 Minutes Monday, August 27, 2018 | 10:00 AM PDT | 01:00 PM EDT
Overview: Attachment-based family therapy (ABFT) is a manualized, empirically informed and supported, family therapy model specifically designed to target family and individual processes associated with adolescent suicide and/or depression. ABFT emerges from interpersonal theories that suggest adolescent depression and suicide can be precipitated, exacerbated, or buffered against by the quality of interpersonal relationships in families. It is a trust-based, emotion-focused psychotherapy model that aims to repair interpersonal ruptures and rebuild an emotionally protective, secure-based parent-child relationship.
Treatment is characterized by five treatment tasks:
Reframing the therapy to focus on interpersonal developmentBuilding alliance with the adolescentBuilding alliance with the parentsFacilitating conversations to resolve attachment rupturesPromoting autonomy and competency in the adolescent
The ABFT model grows out of the Structural Family Therapy tradition (Minuchin, 1974) but is informed by more contemporary systemic approaches such as Multidimensional Family Therapy (Liddle, 1999) and Emotionally-focused therapy (Greenberg and Johnson, 1988). Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) provides the over-arching framework for understanding and intervening in the clinical process. Without ignoring biological factors, ABFT therapists presume that family conflict, detachment, harsh criticism or more insidious family traumas (e.g., abandonment, neglect abuse) can cause, maintain and/or exacerbate depression in adolescents.
The impact of these family processes is compounded when parents fail to comfort, support and help their adolescent identify, discuss and work through these disturbing experiences. Conversely, when adolescents perceive their parents as caring, protective and autonomy-granting, the family provides a secure base helping the adolescent to withstand and grow from life's stressors.
ABFT aims to repair ruptures in the attachment relationship, and establish or resuscitate the secure base so important for adolescent development. "Repairing attachment" occurs by first helping family members to access their longing for greater closeness and adopt the idea of rebuilding trust. Then adolescents, in individual sessions, are helped to identify and articulate their perceived experiences of attachment failures, and commit to a discussion of these experiences with their parents. Then parents, also in individual sessions, are encouraged to consider how their own intergenerational legacies affect their parenting style - which typically leads to their developing greater empathy for their adolescent's experiences. When adolescents and parents are ready, the therapist brings them back together to discuss the adolescent's concerns.
As adolescents get these thoughts, feelings and memories "off their chests" and receive acknowledgement and empathy from their parents, they become more willing to consider their own contributions to family conflict. Although not all issues are necessarily addressed or resolved, this mutually respectful and often emotionally-laden dialogue serves as a "corrective attachment experience" that can set in motion a renewed sense of trust and commitment. As tension and conflict diffuse at home, therapists encourage adolescents to pursue pro-social activities outside the home that will promote competency and autonomy. Parents serve as the secure base from which adolescents seek comfort, advice, support and encouragement in exploring these new opportunities.
ABFT is a flexible yet programmatic approach to facilitating these processes. Although not prescriptive, the treatment manual provides a clear 'road map' of how to accomplish this "shuttle diplomacy" thereby allowing these profound and reparative conversations to occur quickly in therapy. Therapists are taught to rapidly focus on core family conflicts, relational failure, vulnerable emotions and the instinctual desire for giving and receiving attachment security.
Why should you Attend: High rates of adolescent depression and suicide present as major international public health problems.Suicidal adolescents are often a daunting population for clinicians to work with given their high-risk. Of the few effective treatments for this population, many are often multi-modal involving individual and group therapy, medication, etc.
In this workshop, Dr Levy will use lecture and case studies to provide an overview of the theoretical principles, research support, and clinical strategies for ABFT. She will review the goals and structure of the five treatment tasks that provide a roadmap for delivering this interpersonally focused psychotherapy effectively and rapidly in community mental health.
Areas Covered in the Session:OverviewDepression and Suicide StatisticsTheory of Normative FunctioningTheory of PathologyThe SolutionEmpirical SupportClinical Model
Learning Objectives:Explain the theoretical foundation of ABFTDiscuss the purpose of the five treatment tasksDescribe the strategies used in the five treatment tasks
Who Will Benefit:CounselorsCouple and Family TherapistsER Physicians (Day One)Health Care Administrators (Day One)Mental Health ProfessionalsPsychiatristsPsychologistsPsychotherapistsPrimary Care Physicians (Day One)Social Workers

Speaker Profile Dr. Suzanne Levy is a licensed clinical psychologist and training director of the ABFT Training Program at Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions. Previously, she was the training director and a clinical child psychologist at the Center for Family Intervention Science at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Levy is a co-developer of Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT).
ABFT is the only manualized, empirically informed and supported, family therapy model specifically designed to target family and individual processes associated with adolescent suicide and/or depression. Since 2007, Dr. Levy has been conducting ABFT training workshops and supervision for therapists nationally and internationally. She also over sees ABFT treatment in Drexel's Center for Family Intervention Science’s clinical trials. She has presented regionally, nationally, and internationally on ABFT, emotion coaching, child and adolescent therapies, resilience, adolescent depression, adolescent development, and adolescent substance use.
Dr. Levy has presented at 100’s of workshops, conferences, and invited lectures, as well as in college classrooms. Along with her colleagues, Drs. Guy and Gary Diamond, Dr. Levy has written the ABFT manual, "Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Depressed Adolescents" published by the American Psychological Association.
Price - $139
Contact Info:Netzealous LLC - MentorHealthPhone No: 1-800-385-1607Fax: 302-288-6884 Email: support@mentorhealth.comWebsite: http://www.mentorhealth.com/
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