This book is intended to provide to the eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) clinician advanced tools to treat children with complex trauma, attachment wounds, and dissociative tendencies. It covers key elements to develop case conceptualization skills and treatment plans based on the adaptive information processing (AIP) model. A broader perspective is presented by integrating concepts from attachment theory, affect regulation theory, affective neuroscience, and interpersonal neurobiology. These concepts and theories not only support the AIP model, but they expand clinicians’ understanding and effectiveness when working with dissociative, insecurely attached, and dysregulated children. The book presents aspects of our current understanding of how our biological apparatus is orchestrated, how its appropriate development is thwarted when early, chronic, and pervasive trauma and adversity are present in our lives, and how healing can be promoted through the use of EMDR therapy. In addition, it provides a practical guide to the use of EMDR within a systemic framework. It illustrates how EMDR therapy can be used to help caregivers develop psychobiological attunement and synchrony as well as to enhance their mentalizing capacities. Another important goal of the book is to bring strategies from other therapeutic approaches, such as play therapy, sand tray therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Theraplay, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) into a comprehensive EMDR treatment, while maintaining appropriate adherence to the AIP model and EMDR methodology. This is done with the goal of enriching the work that often times is necessary with complexly traumatized children and their families.

Adolescence is an extremely unique and critical stage of development. In order to provide the helping professional with a clear understanding of typical adolescent development, and to fill the gap many have in understanding adolescence in general, this book offers a concise, in-depth, scientific overview of adolescent development specifically geared toward those applying the information in the helping professions. The intended audience for the book is helping professionals such as psychologists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, educators, and nurses. The book covers adolescent developmental theories that provide a basis for understanding observations about the nature of adolescents. These theories include the intrapsychic, cognitive, behavioral/environmental, and biological theories. Puberty is also the signal indicating the beginning of physical and neurological growth. The hormonal changes of puberty initiate drastic growth in the body and organs of adolescents. The book reviews several aspects of overall adolescent health, including the issue of adolescent sleep and its importance and how adolescent diet and nutrition impact development. In addition to the “hardware” transformation in an adolescent’s brain, adolescents undergo important changes in their ability to think. The book also examines Piaget’s adolescent stage of cognitive development, the formal operational stage, and how changes in the way adolescents think impact their interactions with others. It introduces the multiple social changes with family and friends that occur during adolescence and examines how adolescents interact with TV, media, and technology and deals with the issue of cyberbullying and reviews the most common adolescent problems, such as drug use, risky behaviors, eating issues, and depression. Each chapter integrates several features to guide helping professionals in applying adolescent development in practice.

This book deals with evidence-based mental health and learning interventions for children and adolescents, and provides guidance on implementation in practice. It is a compendium of proven treatment strategies for resolving more than 40 of the most pressing and prevalent issues facing young people, and provides immediate guidance and uniform step-by-step instructions for resolving issues ranging from psychopathological disorders to academic problems, and is of relevance for both school-based and clinically-based practice. Issues covered include crisis interventions and response, social and emotional issues, academic/learning issues, psychopathological disorders, neuropsychological disorders, and the behavioral management of childhood health issues. The book covers several fields of study including applied settings, school crises, natural disasters, school violence, suicidal behavior, childhood grief, reading disabilities, math disabilities, written-language disorders, homework compliance, anger and aggression, bullying, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Each chapter follows a consistent format including a brief description of the problem and associated characteristics, etiology and contributing factors, and three evidence-based, step-by-step sets of instructions for implementation. Additionally, each chapter provides several websites offering further information about the topic.

This book is a comprehensive assessment of the school-to-prison pipeline and is intended for stakeholders, advocates, researchers, policy makers, educators, and students. It explains the serious problems that strict school discipline and tough-on-crime juvenile court policies have wrought on many students, disproportionately impacting some of our most vulnerable children and adolescents. The criminalization of education and school settings, along with fewer rehabilitative alternatives within the juvenile courts, has created the pipeline and also made the problems significantly worse. The book is unique in both its breadth of coverage and incorporation of empirical knowledge from the fields of education, juvenile justice/criminology, sociology/social work, and psychology to synthesize the impact and possible solutions to the entrenched school-to-prison pipeline. It explains that although there was a crossover impact between these two child- and adolescent caring systems, the punitive movements were both independent and interdependent. The increased use of zero-tolerance policies and police in the schools has exponentially increased arrests and referrals to the juvenile courts. Similarly, in the juvenile justice system, a movement toward harsher penalties and a tough-on-crime approach more than doubled the number of adolescents adjudicated delinquent and brought under court supervision. The book presents the common risk factors that make it more likely for students to be involved in punitive school and juvenile court systems. It explores who is disproportionately involved and why this may be occurring for the following child and adolescent groups: impoverished families; those of color; trauma and maltreatment victims; those with special education disabilities; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT).

This book on child and adolescent dissociation provides the reader with a window into the fractured minds of traumatized children and adolescents and offers an effective pathway toward healing. It delves into the inner workings of vulnerable children’s use of dissociation. An in-depth discussion of the Star Theoretical Model (STM), an inclusive theoretical model that examines five intersecting theories attachment, neurobiology, developmental theory, family systems, and dissociation provides a solid foundation for understanding how and why children dissociate and also a road map to guide traumatized children toward successful recovery. One of the chapters deals with 16 warning signs such as auditory hallucinations which are suggestive of dissociation in children and adolescents. Familiarity with the warning signs can enhance proper evaluation for dissociation so that children can receive appropriate treatment and care. The Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (A-DES) is a commonly used checklist to assess for dissociative symptoms. A phase-oriented treatment model specifically designed for dissociative children will help them develop integrative functions. Another chapter focuses on helping children to further develop their skills in self-reflection, mindfulness, and somatic awareness, along with managing traumatic triggers and learning to calm down the overactive stress-response system. The book also deals with creative art therapy interventions for adolescents with dissociation and integrating dissociative treatment and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) therapy with children with trauma and dissociation.

With Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) treatment, children can overcome their low self-esteem; control their impulses; modify their behaviors in school; change their relationships with peers, teachers, and family members; organize their lives; and, essentially, change their low opinions of themselves. This book focuses on providing advanced training and support for therapists to be successful in using EMDR with child clients, and documents a standardized protocol for using EMDR with children for training and research purposes. It begins with a review of Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) theory applied to EMDR with children and an abbreviated review of research on using EMDR with child clients. The second chapter explains how to get started using EMDR, before describing the steps in the EMDR protocol in case conceptualization with child clients. Six other chapters explain the goals for the specific phases of the EMDR protocol, with directions for each session, instructions for the therapist, and finally, a script for therapists to use with child clients. The phases include discussions on case conceptualization, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan and closure, and reevaluation. The Assessment Phase of EMDR therapy includes specific procedural steps including distilling the core belief schema including negative cognition (NC) and positive cognition (PC). Additional chapters describe advanced management skills for using EMDR with special populations and explore cognitive interweaves (CI) to help the therapist when the child/teen experiences blocked processing.

This book focuses on the practice of child psychotherapy, the theories and treatment practice. The book is divided into three parts. The first part dwells on the need for developmentally grounded child psychotherapy. It explores theories of human development, also referred to as developmental psychology and educational theory in order to understand how children are challenged to learn, and reviews theories that speculate how love and our earliest relationships impact health and well-being. Part II assimilates the developmental theory into the pragmatics of child psychotherapy. It discusses the pragmatics of providing child psychotherapy with considerations for therapists, focuses on the legal and ethical challenges that arise when providing child psychotherapy, and reviews the types of assessment tools that cover all phases of development, including emotional, social, developmental, educational, and psychological. The third part presents the best practices in child psychotherapy. Here, models of evidence-based practice in child psychotherapy are reviewed with examples of what each model offers to the treatment process. These theories also describe what the therapist brings to psychotherapy based on the therapist’s belief of what therapy looks like and the therapist’s role in the relationship with the client. One of the chapters guides the therapist through case conceptualization that integrates the most efficacious treatment interventions into the eight-phase template of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Basic issues such as sleeping, feeding, emotional dysregulation, and learning issues are also discussed with common responses and references to provide to parents through a developmentally grounded practice.

This manual distills simple and practical ways to employ eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy scripted protocols and forms to effectively utilize the entire EMDR therapy eight-phased treatment with infants, toddlers, young children, preteens, and teens from a developmental perspective. It provides step-by-step directions, session protocols, scripts, and forms for each phase of the protocol, along with instructions for integrating techniques and tools from play, art, sand tray, and other helpful therapies. The various phases of EMDR therapy are: case conceptualization, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure and reevaluation. A therapist can use a cognitive interweaves (CI) when reprocessing is blocked, when the child/teen is looping, when time is running out, or when it is necessary to expedite the session so that the client does not remain in a highly activated state. Resource development and installation (RDI) is used when the child/teen does not appear to have adequate tolerance to use EMDR therapy; bilateral stimulation (BLS) is used to install the resource. Mapping and graphing tools help to organize the EMDR therapy, especially with children, and can be integrated into the eight-phases of treatment. While using a fidelity questionnaire, a therapist can monitor his or her own adherence to the phases in order to improve practice and prevent therapist drift, application of a blocking beliefs questionnaire is used to discern the blocking beliefs of children and adolescents.