TREATMENT MODELS

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is an active goal-directed treatment that can help your child develop skills to better cope with their worries, self-criticism or depressive feelings. It is a relatively short-term, active treatment for a wide range of mental health issues including: depression, anxiety, anger, loneliness, panic attacks, perfectionism, procrastination, discomfort in social situations, and self-criticism. CBT has been found to be an effective form of treatment for children, adolescents and adults through decades of clinical trials. The focus of treatment is on identifying how you are thinking, feeling, and behaving in your daily life and then understanding how each dimension of these thoughts, emotions and behaviors impact one another. CBT helps children identify patterns of biases in their thinking, or “thinking traps”, and provides guidance on how to challenge and change these distortions that are negatively impacting their mood and/or behavior. CBT is an empowering treatment that encourages your child to test out ways to challenge negative patterns of thought or behavior in between sessions, during real-life situations and stressors, so that they can increase their competency and sense of efficacy in dealing with emotional issues on their own.

•  Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
•  Trauma Focused-CBT

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS)

Collaborative Problem Solving offers a new perspective on the treatment of children and teens with challenging behavior, which is that “children do well when they can”. First, CPS understands kids’ “challenging” behavior as the byproduct of lagging skills NOT the result of being manipulative, attention-seeking, or trying to drive their parents crazy (though it can certainly feel that way). Children and teens who routinely exhibit “difficult” behavior, like screaming, defying adults requests, hitting, throwing, and breaking things are displaying these behaviors because they really have no other, more effective way of expressing distress, communicating fearful feelings, or tolerating frustration. CPS focuses on resolving these lagging skills, like black and white, rigid thinking and difficulty making transitions, by proactively identifying the situations that typically trigger these lagging skills and then working collaboratively with the child to resolve the underlying problems that are setting the stage for conflict.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy was first developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD and is intended to help teens who have significant difficulty regulating their emotions and their behaviors. This approach combines behavior therapy (through skill building) and emotional validation (through fostering acceptance). Your clinician will design a treatment plan based on your teen’s needs, which includes individual and group therapy targeting pervasive emotional dysregulation and improving interpersonal relationships. Both you and your teen will be learning new skills to regulate intense emotions and tolerate stressful events.

Attachment-Based Therapies

• Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy  (DDP)

Loving, healthy parent-child relationships are central to DDP and its mission to remediate adopted children’s past experiences of absent, neglectful, or abusive caregivers. DDP facilitates the child’s experience of being understood and accepted unconditionally by their adoptive parents, in order to develop their ability to cope more effectively with stressful feelings and to deepen their capacity to form close relationships. In DDP sessions, both the parent and child are present in the room together, so that there is more opportunity for hugs, eye contact, laughter, tears, and touch. The emphasis is on setting the child up for success by choosing emotionally and developmentally appropriate goals instead of expressing disappointment and anger about what the child “should” be able to do. A playful, safe, accepting, curious, and empathic environment is created to explore tough topics that are often avoided, like shameful feelings about “bad” behavior or episodes of past neglect or abuse.