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Treating Youth with Sexual Aggression: Stopping Predators? Or Meeting Needs?
For the last three decades, the Juvenile Starting Over (JSO) program at Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) has been treating Youth with Sexual Aggression (YwSA). It is the only community-based program in the area specially designed to help these young people cease their problematic sexual...
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Practice Principles for Group Work with Children and Adolescents in the Aftermath of Disasters and Other Traumatic Events
Following are four interrelated and overlapping practice for group work with young people impacted by disasters and other traumatic events; to help them to build coping skills and overcome isolation. These principles can be (should be) incorporated into any evidence-based practice that utilizes...
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Antidepressant Medications for Children and Adolescents: Information for Parents and Caregivers
Depression is a serious disorder that can cause significant problems in mood, thinking, and behavior at home, in school, and with peers. It is estimated that major depressive disorder (MDD) affects about 5 percent of adolescents. Research has shown that, as in adults, depression in children and...
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Managing Your Fear of Side Effects
Your child is morose, somber and irritable. She refuses to go to school or see friends. She is increasingly dysfunctional. The doctor suggests medicine and suddenly relief is on the horizon. Whether it’s the pain of depression or anxiety, the dysfunction of ADHD or the conflict that results...
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Achieving Services Children Deserve
Every young person is fully prepared for adulthood, with a supportive family and community, an effective school environment as well as high quality healthcare. According to the New York State Office of Mental Health 2008 Children’s Mental Health Plan is introduced with the above strategy...
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Therapeutic Groups for Girls
Girls with learning disabilities, attention deficits and pervasive developmental disorders commonly experience different degrees of social impairment. They can be referred to the Social Skills Program in our Child and Adolescent Outpatient Clinic at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Westchester...
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The NYSPA Report: Medication for Children and Adolescents
A doctor’s recommendation to use psychotropic medication for a child can lead to many concerns and questions in both the child and their parent. This article is meant to help clarify these concerns and help families understand that they can get safe, effective treatment for their child. The...
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Designing Integrated Services for Adolescents: One Agency’s Experience
Addressing the mental health needs of teens in a clinic setting offers a unique set of challenges. Adolescent clients can strain the assumptions and framework of traditional mental health services in a number of ways: they have a developmental imperative to separate from parents and adult...
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Shattering the Silence of Selective Mutism
If you’ve ever worked with a student identified as being diagnosed with Selective Mutism, you might see how easy it is to understand why many assume that the student is willfully avoiding eye contact, conversation, or compliance. How can it be that the same child, who speaks so clearly and...
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Point of View: Mental Health Needs in Kinship
There are 350-400,000 children and adolescents in New York State that are in kinship care. I.e., they are raised by relatives other than their biological parents. Although there is some evidence that these children do better psychologically than those who are in foster care with strangers, there...
