Child Mind Institute

Child Mind Institute

The item of interest I chose is a website dedicated to mental health disorders and concerns that children and adolescences may encounter. The website is the Child Mind Institute (https://childmind.org/). The Child Mind Institute (CMI) is based out of New York. CMI conducts various research students on mental health issues that occur in children and adolescences.at any given time CMI has multiple clinical studies going on that are led by their vast multi-disciplinary teams. For example, they currently have two different studies related to autism occurring. One is Neuronal Correlates of Autism in ADHD and Autism and the other is Brain and Behavioral Changes Over Time in Young Children with Autism. Also, within the vast realm of research conducted by CMI, they also have a platform called Data-Sharing & Open-Source Initiatives where the researchers for CMI freely and openly share their data as they obtain it instead of withholding it for publication.

In addition to research, CMI offers access to a plethora of other resources some of which include:

·       Topics A-Z (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/)

o   Provides information about disorders, concerns, medications and basic facts about disorders children can have.

·       Guides (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/guides/)

o   Resources for parents, educators, and practitioners to use to not only gain a better understanding and to identify signs of disorders and concerns in children but also how to better support children with different disorders.

·       Blogs & Articles (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/brainstorm-blog/)

o   Provides information about different disorders, concerns, and current factors that can influence or relate to the mental health of children.

·       Programming (https://childmind.org/our-impact/school-and-community/)

o   Offers curriculum for schools and communities as well as webinars for educators, parents, and professionals. Some resources may cost money.

·       Ask an Expert (https://childmind.org/topics-a-z/ask-an-expert/)

o   Provides an FAQ format with questions that other parents have had about their children with different mental health disorders that are answered by the multi-disciplinary team at CMI.

·       Symptom Checker (https://childmind.org/symptomchecker/)

o   Survey platform where parents can check off different items that relate to their child’s behavior. Gives insight into what their child might have but does not diagnose any disorders.

·       Project UROK (https://childmind.org/our-impact/project-urok/)

o   Online platform that allows children with mental health issues to share stories, videos, and to gain support from others with mental health issues. UROK was designed to help de-stigmatize mental health issues through encouraging others to share their stories.

Although this is not an exhaustive list of the resources or information that is provided through the Child Mind Institute, these are resources that I found to be unique and potentially beneficial. The information and resources provided through this website allow for anyone on it to gain better insight into the diverse mental health disorders and concerns that children and adolescences face. I think that this website is a great tool to have in our toolbox as school social workers as we could share the information on it with our fellow educators at our schools and with the parents of the students that we work with. This website could be especially useful to share with parents who may not have a deep knowledge of mental health disorders in children. Parents and children alike could utilize this website to gain a better understanding of disorders especially if a student is being evaluated for special education services (IEP or 504). With this website in our toolkits, we can continue to partake in the home-school-community linkages that are a part of the school social work practice model (Villarreal Sosa, Cox, & Alvarez, 2017).

Please explore this awesome website! https://childmind.org/

References

Villarreal Sosa, L., Cox, T., & Alvarez, M. (2017). School Social Work: National Perspectives on Practice in Schools. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978019027842.

Calm Guided Meditation

Calm is a guided mindfulness and meditation app that can be used in a lot of different ways.  Each day has a daily calm that provides the user with a focus on how to be more mindful and helps guide the user into recognizing times that cause stress.  Most of the meditations are about 10 minutes but you are able to find ones that are shorter or longer depending on your needs.  There are also different programs for things like sleep, anxiety, stress, self-care, focus, etc.  There are different practices that last between 7 to 21 days that focus on different needs as well which I thought could be helpful for a student or an educator who might be facing certain challenges.  Other features include music that is calming or energizing that lasts a few minutes or over an hour, a collection of sleep stories to help individuals with anxious minds work on their sleep hygiene, and short stretches and yoga moves to help relax the body.  

I believe this practice would be helpful to use in sessions or groups with students because it has been shown to be effective and is fairly simple to practice.  It helps with feelings of disappointment or overwhelming experiences.  Mindfulness has been used with students with ADHD and Autism as well as anxiety, depression, and behavioral challenges. Mindfulness can be used as an empowerment tool for students and help them regulate emotions and build resilience in tough situations.  The creators of Calm state that using mindfulness can help students regulate emotions better, be more alert during learning, have better attention to the task at hand and respond better to the needs of other students. The application has a seven-page instruction manual on how to implement this practice in a school setting as well.

This website has a few options for access, one is limited access which is free to all users.  The second option is that an individual can pay for an annual membership of $59.99 or a lifetime membership for $399.99.  However, there are two options for school social workers, you can sign up through calm health and get a free yearlong subscription for being a social worker or you can sign up through calm schools and get a lifetime membership for free, you just have to get approved.  It can be accessed through your computer, android, or iPhone.  

You can access this website by downloading the app on your iPhone or Android, or by going to: www.calm.com 

TherapistAid

My first item of interest is a website called TherapistAid that provides mental health professionals with worksheets, interactive tools, guides, videos, articles, and products such as card games, books, and much more. When visiting the website, mental health professional can use filters based on demographics including children, adolescents, and adults as well as specific topics that they are looking to address. The topics that are covered with the tools provided include anger, anxiety, art therapy, CBT, communication skills, DBT, depression management, education, emotion regulation, goal setting, grief, parenting and behavior, positive psychology, relaxation, self-esteem, stress management, substance use, and values.

The way that I have been using TherapistAid at my internship with Evanston Township Highschool is for the formation of groups and the content being covered throughout group sessions. Each full time social worker and their interns are responsible for creating and facilitating a certain amount of groups during the school year. I have used both the tools available at Evanston in addition to TherapistAid to help create an online resource center for social workers to use. Social workers can go to this shared web page and look up the topic they are covering in group. Once they search for the topic and click on that folder, there will be a list of resources provided which includes worksheets, curriculums, videos, interactive games, and much more. For example, I will be cofacilitating a group that focuses on social skills for students considered high functioning who have IEP goals that indicate a focus on communication and positive socialization. By filtering the demographic and specific topic, I can use TherapistAid to pull worksheets and activities that will assist students with increasing social skills.

TherpistAid fits into providing evidence-based education, behavior, and mental health services portion of the school social work practice model. In its mission statement, TherapistAid states “it is dedicated to helping mental health professionals improve their craft by providing free evidence-based education and therapy tools. Our resources are created with clients in mind, which means avoiding jargon, and creating tools that are not only useful in theory, but in practice” (https://www.therapistaid.com/about). By using TherapistAid, social workers and other mental health professional can provide multiple examples of evidence-based practice materials that meet the clients where they are at as well as remains within a strengths based approach. These tools can also be used to monitor group and individual progress to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of services being provided to students.

Below is the link to the TherapistAid website. It is free to sign up with your email and easy to navigate. I hope this will be useful during your internship and beyond!

https://www.therapistaid.com/about

https://www.therapistaid.com/

Suicidal Ideations

Last Friday at my internship, we had three crises. Three students had to be evaluated because of suicidal ideations. Since this was the most overwhelmed I have ever been at the school I decided to look into some resources to help with the process. I have provided some links as resources when faced with a student that has suicidal idealizations, and we as social workers have to hospitalize them. 

The first link, I find to be the most helpful, comes from the NASW website. Under school social work tool kit, you can find many articles. When I searched suicide, this and a few other tools came up. This PDF is extremely long, however, it gives step by step tools for all suicide related situations that come up in the school. Chapter two is the chapter I focused on because that chapter has guidelines and assessment tools for going through the process of hospitalizing a student. Chapter 3 discusses what to do when a student from the school commits suicide. Chapter 4 also has resources on a few training options social workers can take to be more prepared for the time they have a suicidal student. 

            The next link is also from the NASW website. This link does not go into what to do when you have a student who has suicidal ideations in your office, but just talks about preventative measures to take within the school. The article discuses warning signs to be on the lookout for. 

            The final link is to the Illinois Department of Human Services. This page explains what SASS is, how to get in contact with SASS, and what the purpose of SASS is. The link also explains who is eligible for the SASS services. 

            All these links I have provided are great resources for school social workers to have because unfortunately many students self-harm and have suicidal ideations. It is our job to assess them, call their parents to inform them, and get the students the help and care they need. Our job in this situation is very stressful and overwhelming, which is why understanding what to do is imperative. 

https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA12-4669/SMA12-4669.pdf

https://www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=KAdzT4skAT8%3d&portalid

http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=92597

Free Online Webinar: Substance Abuse Prevention

This a professional development opportunity provided by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation titled: Keeping Healthy Kids Healthy: How Substance Abuse Prevention Can Really Work. This is a free online webinar taking place Wednesday, December 19th @12PM central standard time. This webinar has not been approved for CE credit, but you will receive a certificate of completion. The other added perk to this is that even if you sign up and cannot be present to listen at the scheduled time, you will receive a link where you can listen on your own time. 

Event Registration Link

Here is a summary of the session that was provided: 

It is a research-supported fact that most teens today are making healthy choices when it comes to substance use. Yet, opportunities for kids to remain free from substance use disorder are jeopardized when we as caring adults lack basic understanding about how our attitudes and behavior can protect them from early, risky use of alcohol and other drugs. 

This webinar will outline substance use prevention as a health science. FCD Prevention Works will share best practices, along with robust data from the international FCD Student Attitudes and Behavior Survey, to explore practical ways for you to positively impact the health of the teens in your life.  

I am also attaching a link to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation site where they have a number of webinar options including, but not limited to, Flexibility of Programs Employing Evidence-based Practices, Bullying Prevention Practices, and Keeping Healthy Kids Healthy. The Foundation provides a number of resources related to substance use disorders, alcohol and drug prevention, violence prevention, and behavioral health issues. As an intern in a high school setting all of these topics are extremely relevant and useful. Substance issues are highly prevalent in this age group and early intervention and prevention measures can be crucial in combating this issue. The Betty Ford Treatment Center utilizes the twelve step practices of mutual support in their treatment in addition to multidisciplinary clinical care. One of the webinar topics is The Flexibility of Programs Employing Evidence - Based Practice! The center really emphasizes using individual evidence based practices combined to best fit for the individual client. This is a resource I would highly recommend! 

Site Link

Treatment Planner

While meeting with my advisor before I have an IEP meeting, I was struggling to create goals that would be sufficient. My supervisor handed me a bunch of packets, some helpful and some not so helpful. He then showed me a book, “The Complete Psychotherapy Treatment Planner.” He explained how he uses this book frequently for his students to help him come up with goals. What he also explained was how it broke down the long-term goals into short-term objectives. For the short-term objectives, it give many therapeutic interventions to use for each objective. While working with my students, this book will give me suggestions for my students’ goals, but also suggestions for objectives and interventions to use.

My supervisor explained to me that his copy was very old and there was probably a specific adolescent version that was much newer, so I searched it and got my hands on my copy. When I got my copy and dug deeper into the book, the objectives and interventions have an EBP symbol next to the ones that are psychological treatments that have the best supportive evidence for the interventions and objectives. This is very helpful when working in a school because when I am trying to work with a student, I know that when I follow the suggestions from this book, I will be using a practice that is evidence based. This book has been very helpful so far and you can get it for relatively cheap on amazon. 

Here is the amazon link