High-risk Teens Research Articles

School based group psychotherapy with adolescents: Establishing an effective group program

Establishing an effective group therapy program in secondary schools requires comprehensive knowledge of both group and organizational behavior. The clinical management of administrative concerns is essential to achieving success at conducting groups in an educational milieu. Engaging high risk teenagers for group therapy also requires an effective model for teaching, training and supervision of both educational and clinical professionals as they work together towards common goals with these students. A clear set of criteria for school selection, referral and screening procedures creates a service contract which enables development of a successful program.

Adolescents Who Attempt Suicide-Reply

In Reply.— Drs Kaufman and Mann accurately restate the findings and reservations that appeared in our article. We would like to take issue with three points made in their letter. They correctly state that an unpleasant intervention is not necessarily a bad one, drawing what may be an inappropriate analogy to vaccination, where an unpleasant inflammatory reaction or mild infection is expected and required for the vaccination to be effective. In the instance of suicide prevention classes, a negative response to programs is neither expected nor planned, nor, as far as we can determine, is there any a priori theory that predicts that an unpleasant reaction should serve a positive outcome. It is precisely because we do not understand why a significantly greater number of high-risk teenagers indicate that they are upset by a program and that, in their view, programs could increase the risk of suicide that we cannot