When working with adolescents, developmental consideration should always be at the forefront.
Assignment: Practice Toolbox: Adolescent Intervention
When working with adolescents, developmental consideration should always be at the forefront. Teens are dealing with the formation of self and identity. They are also experiencing biological changes that can shift moods and, at times, cause emotional outbursts.
Interventions for this group can be challenging, as adolescents might avoid asking for assistance in favor of “fitting in.” In turn, they might seek out other, riskier ways of coping, such as alcohol or substance use. Social work interventions focusing on adolescents help them navigate this stage of life and gain healthy coping skills.
In this Assignment, you survey interventions that might be appropriate for adolescents and select one to add to your Practice Toolbox.
To Prepare
Use the Clinical Social Work Interventions :
Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive. A positive attitude, in turn, can help your expectations of yourself and others become more reasonable.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) provides clients with new skills to manage painful emotions and decrease conflict in relationships. DBT specifically focuses on providing therapeutic skills in four key areas. First, mindfulness focuses on improving an individual’s ability to accept and be present in the current moment. Second, distress tolerance is geared toward increasing a person’s tolerance of negative emotion, rather than trying to escape from it. Third, emotion regulation covers strategies to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems in a person’s life. Fourth, interpersonal effectiveness consists of techniques that allow a person to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term form of psychotherapy based on the idea that the way someone thinks and feels affects the way he or she behaves. CBT aims to help clients resolve present-day challenges like depression or anxiety, relationship problems, anger issues, stress, or other common concerns that negatively affect mental health and quality of life. The goal of treatment is to help clients identify, challenge, and change maladaptive thought patterns in order to change their responses to difficult situations.
Select one that you can see yourself using in practice with adolescent clients. Do not use an intervention that you have chosen previously.
Consider why you have chosen this intervention and its strengths and limitations.
By Day 7
Submit a 1-page paper analyzing the adolescent intervention you have chosen:
Why did you select the intervention?
Why might it be especially helpful for use with adolescents?
What challenges or limitations might there be for this intervention?
Use the Learning Resources to support your Assignment. Make sure to provide APA citations and a reference list.
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