Suicide and Non-suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI)

• The relationship between suicide and self-injurious behavior
• When clients present with depression, anxiety, trauma
• Confidentiality, documentation, and legal considerations

Assessment Tools for Adolescents

• Formal assessment tools for NSSI
• Recency and frequency
• Severity
• Triggers
• Who’s aware
• Suicide risk assessment
• SAFE-T
• C-SSRS
• Ideation, plan, means, intent
• Level of risk, intervention and when to hospitalize

Motivational Interviewing Techniques That Engage Young People in Treatment

• Tips to quickly establish rapport
• Using the Stages to Change/Motivational Interviewing Model in Treatment
• Overcome therapy interfering behaviors
• When parents are ready for change NOW!

Adapt DBT for Use with Adolescents

• Track suicidal and self-harming urges with diary cards
• Reduce emotional reactivity and improve distress tolerance
• Identifying emotions and triggers
• Mindfulness practices and relaxation techniques
• Reproducible handouts and checklists

CBT Interventions to Build Coping Skills and Manage Crisis

• "Thought flipping" to maintain positive focus
• Address body image issues
• Create opportunities to build resilience, self-efficacy and self-control
• Handle suicidal crisis – self-soothing and distraction techniques

Effectively Work with Parents, Peers and Schools

• Interpersonal effectiveness skills for adolescents
• Training exercises to convey feelings/read the feelings of others
• Integrate parents into treatment
• Parental behaviors that can do more harm than good
• Means restriction strategies for safe home environments
• Involve schools and peers
• Learn to build “Trusted Adult” support networks
• Peer education approaches that create support
• Minimize the impact of bullying

The American Youth in Crisis

• An overview of recent trends and statistics
• How is the popular media framing this crisis? How is scientific research literature?
• Psychosocial and environmental contributors
• The established treatment and prevention paradigm: a closer look
• Strengths and limitations of the traditional symptom-drug polypharmacy model
• The widening gap between research innovation and clinical practice: opportunities for change

Functional Psychiatry: Expanding & Enhancing the Paradigm

• Traditional models dismiss biology / biologic contributors to mental health: why this is a critical omission
• An evidence-based, dimensional model of psychiatric etiology
• Genetics x environment x epigenetics x metabolism x neurochemistry = health
• Functional Medicine: an evidence-based, comprehensive model for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention

Genetics

• Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and their relevance to psychiatric etiology
• SNP testing as a means to guide clinical decisions, predict individual responses to treatments
• Strengths and limitations of the research

Low-Dose Lithium

• Overview of the research corroborating lithium’s nutritional essentiality
• Overview of the research illuminating lithium’s anti-suicide properties
• Biologic mechanisms underlying lithium’s neuroprotective, mood-stabilizing, anti-suicide effects
• Elucidating the dose-response curve: pharmaceutical vs. nutritional/low-dose lithium
• Strategies for testing and assessment
• Clinical indicators of deficiency
• Strengths and limitations of the research; risks and benefits of supplementation

PANS/PANDAS

• Introduction, review of common symptoms, etiology, and pathogenesis
• Neuropsychiatric signs and symptoms
• Implications of misdiagnosis, relevance to pediatric psychiatry
• Testing
• Strengths and limitations of the research

Celiac Disease

• Introduction, review of common symptoms, etiology, and pathogenesis
• Implications of misdiagnosis and lack of treatment
• Testing

Ultra-Processed Food

• Rate of consumption in American youth
• Exploring research showing robust correlations with adverse mental health outcomes
• Strength and limitations of the research
• Implications for clinical practice

Nutrition

• Fundamentals of human biology; commonly ignored by mainstream models
• The laws of human nutrition: you are what you eat / you are what you don’t eat
• Neurobiologic and neuropsychiatric implications of chronic malnutrition
• Where does nutrition “fit” into a modern, evidence-based Functional treatment model?

Vitamin D

• Overview of roles, biologic essentiality
• Spotlight: serotonin synthesis
• Common causes of deficiency
• Research illuminating robust correlations between Vitamin D deficiency and psychopathology
• Testing
• Strengths and limitations of the research; risks and benefits of supplementation

Zinc

• Overview of roles, biologic essentiality
• Spotlight: neurotransmitter synthesis, digestion
• Common causes of deficiency
• Testing
• Strengths and limitations of the research; risks and benefits of supplementation

Magnesium

• Overview of roles, biologic essentiality
• Spotlight: neurotransmitter synthesis, HPA Axis modulation
• Common causes of deficiency
• Clinical indicators of deficiency
• Strengths and limitations of the research; risks and benefits of supplementation

Biochemical Individuality

• Limitations of “one size fits all” models
• How biochemical individuality can inform a novel paradigm for treatment and prevention

“Vitamin S”: Sleep

• What does sleep accomplish, physiologically?
• How much sleep do we need? Are kids today getting enough?
• Physical, neuropsychiatric ramifications of inadequate sleep, sleep dysfunction
• Research examining links between sleep and suicide
• Limitations of the research
• Evidence-based sleep solutions