Family Therapy for Depressed and Suicidal Adolescents

Training Options  Duration: 60 Minutes  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.

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. 

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.


Price - $139
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