Youth First Social Workers to Receive Specialized Training
In the 50 schools they served in SW Indiana during 2014-2015 school year, Youth First Social Workers saw an average of 32 students per month engaging in self-harm behaviors.
Self-harm, also called self-injury, is defined as the act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. Self-injury is an unhealthy way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration. It’s typically not meant as a suicide attempt but does have positive correlation with suicide completion through the life span.
Youth First Social Work Director Davi Stein-Kiley researched options for Youth First’s 39 Master’s level social workers serving 57 southwest Indiana schools to more effectively respond to this behavior. Stein-Kiley settled on a specialized training, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
Thanks to a grant from the James R. and Adelaide H. Duncan Foundation (Fifth Third Bank, Trustee), specialized training in crisis intervention, including self-harm behaviors and suicidal thinking, will be provided to Youth First Social Workers and other community mental health professionals on October 29th-30th.
The training will be conducted by Dr. Michael R. Hollander, professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Training/Senior Consultant at McLean Hospital, the largest psychiatric affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Hollander is a nationally recognized expert on the causation and treatment of self-injury and lectures throughout the US on the subject. He has been treating adolescents and their families for over 40 years and has held numerous positions of clinical leadership at McLean. Dr. Hollander is a co-founder of McLean’s exceptional 3East DBT program, where he provides consultation to patients, family and staff.
Dr. Hollander is also the author of the book, Helping Teens Who Cut: Understanding and Ending Self-Injury.
Dr. Hollander will be available for interviews at the completion of the first day of training, Thursday, Oct. 29th, at 4:00 pm, at Welborn Conference Center, 410 Mulberry Street, Evansville.
