Parent and family
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Using a case formulation to identify what maintains anxiety
Case conceptualisation helps clinicians move from a description of a young person’s symptoms to an account of what may be keeping them going. In the session on science-informed case conceptualisation, Professor Bryce McLeod illustrated his five-step model with a single case of social anxiety in a young adolescent girl. The case shows how a formulation can bring maintaining factors into view, including the coping strategies of the girl and her mother, and then shape treatment and the conversation with the family.
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Engaging young people in therapeutic conversations about self harm
Conversations after self-harm can help young people understand their experiences and identify changes that matter to them. McCabe et al. (2026) describe how the Supporting Adolescents with Self-Harm (SASH) intervention combines therapeutic assessment, enhanced safety planning and solution-focused brief therapy. Through four young people’s cases and one carer’s case, they illustrate collaborative work grounded in each person’s language, relationships and hopes, offering examples of practice and proposed mechanisms of change, rather than trial results demonstrating that SASH reduces subsequent self-harm.
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Self-Guided Intervention for Intergenerational Anxiety
Could supporting anxious parents help reduce anxiety in children? Explore research on a self-guided online parenting intervention and its effects on child anxiety.
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Keeping Families in the Room during a Crisis
In crisis care for a young person, the parent or carer might be hard to place. The carer carries the risk around the clock, yet often stands outside the formal care the young person receives, and is sometimes treated as part of the problem. Professor Pooja Saini, speaking at a conference on brief interventions for young people and families, described crisis care from two sides at once: families on the edge, and the staff meeting them while close to breaking point. One question stayed afterward: what it would take to keep the carer inside the room instead of at its edge.
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EBSA in young people: complexity, pressure, and the value of slowing down
When a child stops going to school, the wish to help them back quickly is easy to understand. Emotionally based school avoidance rarely has a single cause, though, and the pace of a response can matter as much as its content. One thought runs through what follows: that slowing down can sometimes do more for a child than any effort to hurry a return.
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Meet the expert: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Parenting and Practice (DDP) intervention, with Dr. Kim Golding CBE
We caught up with the presenter – Dr. Kim Golding CBE, a clinical psychologist and consultant and trainer, to talk about in DDP – about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Parenting and Practice (DDP) intervention.
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Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents: Current Evidence and Clinical Practice
Research over the past decade have refined our understanding of ADHD epidemiology, neurobiology, diagnosis, and treatment, with growing emphasis on evidence-based assessment, multimodal intervention, and shared decision-making with young people and families.
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Mastering meltdowns and big feelings with Associate Professor Erin Gonzalez
We caught up with the presenter – Associate Professor Dr. Erin Gonzalez, a clinical psychologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital – about the topic itself, her career, and her hopes for the event.
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25
Parenting and Protecting Adolescents in the Age of Social Media and AI
Adolescents spend much of their lives online and adults are increasingly worried that screen time, social media, and now artificial intelligence (AI) will harm their mental health. Award winning psychologist Candice Odgers will address current fears with facts about adolescent mental health in the digital age and provide science-backed strategies for those working to support the young people in their families, classrooms, and communities.
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Social Fears in Children: The Roles of Parental Communication and Child Temperament
A recent longitudinal study by Zeytinoglu and colleagues (2025) provides insights into how parental verbal communication and child characteristics contribute to the transmission of social fears. The study shows the impact of both positive and negative maternal statements about ambiguous social situations, finding that positive comments were linked to reductions in children’s social fear beliefs, while negative comments predicted increases, especially among children who were behaviourally inhibited or had high anxiety.
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