Working with Violent, Suicidal and Self-destructive Adolescents presented by author and public speaker Matthew D. Selekman, MSW., LCSW., CRADC

Leading the way in Mental Health Training and Education

Working with Violent, Suicidal and Self-destructive Adolescents: A collaborative strengths-based approach
March 9 & 10, 2020 (NEW DATE)
Facilitator: Matthew D. Selekman, MSW., LCSW., CRADC
This training is suitable for: Social workers and educators.

This “hands-on,” practice-oriented workshop will present a collaborative strengths-based family therapy approach that combines the best elements of empirically supported individual and family therapy models with clinical evidence-based practice wisdom about what works with adolescents presenting with severe behavioral and emotional difficulties.

Effective tools and strategies to identify pathways to high-risk adolescent problem-determined systems while building therapeutic alliances with challenging adolescents and family members will be provided. Participants will learn to identify, recruit, and use solution-determined collaborative teams to co-construct high quality solutions, and to carefully tailor-fit therapeutic interventions with the unique needs, preferences, and goals of each family member. The workshop format will combine information-rich didactic presentation, extensive use of videotape examples, and skill-building exercises.

 As a result of attending this workshop, participants will come away with the following practical tools and strategies: 

• Identify pathways to high-risk adolescent problem-determined systems: How they develop, are perpetuated, and can be co-authored into solution-determined stories
• Keys to building strong working alliances with even the most resistant high-risk children and adolescents and their families
• Use key empirically supported family research findings and evidence-based practice wisdom to inform your clinical decision-making
• Identify, recruit, and use of solution-determined collaborative teams comprised of key resource people from the family’s social network to co-construct high quality solutions
• Use of self to create therapeutic breakthroughs with challenging adolescents and their families
• Use therapeutic questions to elicit client expertise, established well-formed treatment goals, uncover secrets, and to co-create compelling future realities
• Co-design, select, and tailor-fit therapeutic interventions to empower the children and adolescents and their families to achieve their goals
• Engage and foster cooperative partnerships with angry, highly pessimistic, laissez-faire, and mental health and substance abuse impaired parents
• Use mindfulness practices to aid adolescents in emotional distress tolerance and to help prevent acting out episodes
• Use effective family-social network relapse prevention tools and strategies
• Keys to fostering cooperative partnerships with helping professionals from larger systems
• Use of one-person family therapy with either the individual adolescent or most concerned parent when other family members are reluctant to participate.

Matthew Selekman, MSW, LCSW

Matthew D. Selekman, MSW, LCSW is in private practice in both Skokie and Lake Forest IL, USA. He is an Approved Supervisor and Clinical Fellow for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, a licensed clinical social worker, and addictions counselor. He also is the Director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions (www.partners4change.net), an international family therapy and brief therapy training and consultation practice in Skokie, IL. Matthew received the Walter S. Rosenberry Award in 2006, 2000, and in 1999 from The Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado for having made significant contributions to the fields of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences.

Matthew is the author of eight professional practice-oriented books: Working with High-Risk Adolescents: An Individualized Family Therapy Approach, (with Mark Beyebach) Changing Self-Destructive Habits: Pathways to Solutions with Couples and Families, Collaborative Brief Therapy with Children, (with Giorgio Nardone) Gorging, Vomiting, and Self-Injuring: A Brief Therapy Approach, The Adolescent and Young Adult Self-Harming Treatment Manual: A Collaborative Strengths-Based Brief Therapy Approach, Working with Self-Harming Adolescents: A Collaborative Strengths-Based Therapy Approach, Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy with Difficult Adolescents (Second Edition), and (with Thomas Todd) Family Therapy Approaches with Adolescent Substance Abusers.

He has presented workshops on his collaborative strengths-based family therapy approach with children, adolescents, and adults extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, Turkey, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.