Today's youth are faced with a multitude of stressors that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The social, emotional, behavioral and academic functioning of young people have been dramatically impacted. Dr. Alec Miller and his colleagues’ adaptation of Dialectical Behavior Therapy has become the only well-established evidence-based treatment for adolescents presenting with suicidal behavior along with a variety of emotional and behavioral challenges. DBT teaches youth and their caregivers a variety of acceptance-based and change-based skills to use to cope more effectively in their lives. This webinar will provide participants with an overview on DBT with adolescents as well as a deeper dive into two critical acceptance-based skills used with teens: Mindfulness skills and validation skills. Validation skills might be the most effective tool you will learn to help regulate your client’s emotions (and your own).

Culturally responsive care should be considered an ethical imperative and an important therapeutic relational factor. Although disparities in mental health care outcomes are multiply determined, one potential contributors are cultural barriers between clinicians and clients. One approach to bridging cultural barriers is to match clinicians to clients by cultural identity (e.g., race, ethnicity); however, given that the healthcare workforce does not reflect the diverse cultural identities of the treatment seeking population, matching may not always be feasible. An alternative to matching is to ensure that every clinician can provide therapy that is responsive to the cultural identities of all clients. This webinar will highlight considerations for adapting interventions to be responsive to clients’ cultural context. Dr. Calloway will discuss the foundation of providing culturally responsive psychotherapy, how culturally-specific stressors may impact mental health, and ways that cognitive and behavioral interventions can be used to lessen distress associated with culturally-specific stressors. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Calloway will use real-world clinical examples to inform concepts presented. The webinar aims to help clinicians feel empowered to use CBT interventions in a manner that is responsive to clients’ cultural identities and contexts.

As restrictions to physical distancing begin to lift in the coming months, we are all facing an unprecedented situation: on the one hand, we will be “going back to normal,” but, on the other one, much has changed over the past few months, so we will actually living in a “new normal.” This juxtaposition of familiar and new can be the source of much anxiety and distress, but it can also represent an opportunity to redefine ourselves and grow. As therapists, we have a unique opportunity to help our clients not only cope with these changes, but also thrive in the face of this new life we’re about to start.

Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) is an evidence-based approach to the treatment of couples developed by Andrew Christensen from UCLA and the late Neil S. Jacobson from the University of Washington. IBCT is integrative in that it brings together the twin goals of emotional acceptance and behavior change. Also, it integrates a variety of treatment strategies under a consistent behavioral theoretical framework. IBCT is part of what some have called the “third wave” of behavior therapy.

Suicide remains the 10th leading cause of death for all individuals in the United States and is the second leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 35 and 54 (CDC, 2018). Evidence based practice around suicide prevention and treatment can be difficult to understand and implement, causing tension between ethical standards of avoiding harm and practicing within areas of competency with day-to-day clinical obligations. This training seeks to find balance between resolving ethical tensions and increasing competencies regarding the treatment of suicidal patients. Participants will review up-to-date information on best practices for suicidal patients, practice interventions, and use working with suicidal clients as a lens from which discuss ethical codes related to practice.

Perhaps the most critical problem facing our discipline today is the lack of understanding of why some individuals do not benefit fully from treatment. Indeed, we have no reliable predictors of treatment outcome for people presenting for psychological treatment. This accords with evidence from recent meta-analyses indicating that approximately half of patients in treatment studies do not achieve clinical remission. Neuroscience offers a set of tools that may help solve this problem.

The developmental transition from adolescence to early adulthood is characterized as a time of uncertainty and instability but also of optimism and growth (see Arnett, 2004). For youth suffering with an anxiety disorder, this period can be fraught with impairments in meeting everyday tasks, resulting in a failure to achieve independent functioning. CBT and medication are effective treatments for anxiety in adolescents and children (Walkup, et al., 2008), however, long-term remission through the transition to adulthood is not maintained for nearly half of effectively treated youth (Ginsburg et al., 2014). Missing from our studies of clinical treatments has been a focus not just on anxiety management in the present, but on assisting youth and families in understanding and meeting the tasks of development. Central also, to treatment, is for youth to take on the challenges of anxiety and daily living with appropriate parental guidance and support.

Long considered an important treatment for depression, behavioral activation (BA) is a robust and transdiagnostic change process. Because reinforcement-based deficits are evident across disorders, BA is an evidence-based means of targeting reward systems and avoidance for disorders beyond depression (e.g., in PTSD, anxiety, disordered eating and substance misuse/abuse). Culturally-attuned BA combines activation with an intentional focus on personal values and meaning, and can be implemented by providers across levels of professional training. Improving session effectiveness and outcomes requires viewing age as a facet of diversity that intersects with other identities, calling for both humility and the age-appropriate application of culturally-attuned change strategies. This webinar highlights strategies and age-appropriate resources for applying BA with culturally diverse individuals across the lifespan, as we help our clients cultivate meaning in their daily lives.

Recent widely publicized incidents of police brutality targeting Black people have helped to expose the depth and breadth of racism in our society. As a result, considerable attention has been placed across our academic institutions and organizations in the past few months on providing guidance and facilitating dialogue around the impacts of racism on clinical practice, teaching curricula, research pursuits, and professional/hiring patterns within our field. However, it is crucial we recognize that the occurrence of racism within our society, and our field, has been ever-present for Black and brown individuals for decades preceding the more recent media attention on these issues. Further, there is growing recognition that simply not being overtly racist is neither acceptable nor sufficient to achieve equity, but many people are not aware of the many opportunities they have to actively promote equity and inclusion in their work as mental health professionals.

Achieving effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy across a diversity of patients continues to be a foremost concern of clinicians and clinical researchers alike. Further, therapeutic alliance appears to be an important feature in supporting favorable outcomes from evidence-based treatments. Yet, there remains a scarcity of empirical data testing specific features that most readily facilitate effective collaboration in a multi-cultural therapy relationship.