Syllabus Overview 

Key models for therapeutic work with teenagers:

• Mentalized based interviews (MBT)
• Dyadic Developmental psychotherapy (DDP)
• Affect Labelling and Mental State Talk
• Psychological Formulation/Collaborative sense making (BPS)
• Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF)
•  Emotion Focused Counselling (EFT)
• Neuroscience of Emotions and Relationship

Teenage Concerns:

• The neuroscience and psychology of what every teenager needs to know about life in order to live it well, your teenage brain, your teenage chemicals, how to have emotions instead of your emotions having you, drugs, sex, porn, social media, social comparison, the skills of happiness, the art of relationships.
• Addressing climate emotions
• Diversity, difference and discrimination
• Identity: Therapeutic conversations with teenagers, exploring gender and sexuality, including trans, gender diverse and re-emergent identities

Working with different client groups and specific realms of adversity:

• Working with specific vulnerable teenage client groups, refugees, victims of incest, the allure of gangs, addiction, teenagers in extremis
• Teenagers affected by parental alcohol use/mental health problems
• Connecting with angry and highly defended teenagers in ways that help them access core pain safely: EFT
• Working with grief, separations and endings, in life and counselling
• Positive ways of working with challenging teens through understanding the adolescent within us

Ethics and the law 

Protecting teenagers: What every professional needs to know about safe practice with teenagers and working ethically

Skills-based practice in counselling teenagers:

• The integration of different counselling models for working with teenagers: MBT, DDP, EFT
• The role of emotion in the process of change: EFT
• Using arts, imagery and sand play in therapy with teenagers: using the arts to access core pain: EFT
• Skills practice using "Help Teenagers Talk about their Lives Cards"
• Big Empathy Drawing practice with peer and staff supervision of cases
• Sensory Integration for teenagers (theory and practice)
• Work with therapeutic relationships, countertransference, transference, communication by impact and virtual work
• Parent-teenager dyad work: Ensuring safe and structured communication
• Clinical supervisions. case presentations and running group for teenagers (throughout the training)
• The role of social injustice in the counselling room
• How to meet the unmet emotional needs of the teenage client

Adolescent mental health and psychiatry:

• Key causes of adolescent mental health problems: The muddle between trauma and psychiatric diagnosis (ADHD, ASD, Anxiety, Bipolar Borderline and Depressive Disorders)
• What every mental health professional needs to know about giving psychiatric drugs to young people
• Counselling for specific teenage mental health issues: Anxiety, Depression, OCD, eating disorders, self-harm