The Aggressive Adolescent

Maximize your effectiveness with troubled kids!The Aggressive Adolescent: Clinical and Forensic Issues provides mental health professionals with a comprehensive text that covers both theoretical and practical applied knowledge of aggressive youth in a specific, problem-focused way. Through case histories and practical treatment interventions, this unique book will give you information to help you provide improved services to adolescents who have experienced neglect, physical abuse, and/or sexual abuse. The Aggressive Adolescent offers you a new model for practical and functional assessment, treatment, planning, and service delivery for aggressive youths. The book also explores legal and forensic issues that frequently accompany these cases to bring you insight into the whole picture surrounding problem adolescents. Compelling and comprehensive, The Aggressive Adolescent shows you how some behaviors once attributed to mental illness are now seen as criminal, and how this view is pushing mentally ill youths into the criminal justice system. This vital guide will help you, as a mental health professional, to bolster your understanding of forensic mental health issues and effectively assist in criminal justice settings.The Aggressive Adolescent will help you become a better, more connected youth care worker. You will learn: - to see institutionalized adolescents as whole people rather than focusing on a single characteristic such as violent behavior - to understand that these adolescents share common needs, desires, and aspirations with their therapists, and that you can use these commonalities to give you a connection that will facilitate their therapy - to see that traditional methods of intervention are often inappropriate or ineffective for aggressive adolescents - to address issues of risk assessment, malpractice, and liability, to help ensure fiscal and legal accountability The Aggressive Adolescent presents strategies for dealing with youths who are resistant to entering into treatment so that you can help them deal with their problems. This essential book will assist you in developing and implementing effective systems of care for aggressive adolescents in order to give them the help and support they need.

Davis, Daniel L

Contents - Acknowledgments - Clinical Prologue - The Parable of Nasrudin - Introduction - Chapter 1. The Problem of Violence in our Society - The Problem of Juvenile Violence - The Misperception of the Decline in Juvenile Crime - Chapter 2. The Problem of Violence in Mental Health Treatment - The Violent Adult Psychiatric Patient - The Increasing Severity of Emotional Problems of Violent Youth in Corrections - Violence in Treatment Settings - A New Paradigm for Treatment of Violent Youth - Chapter 3. Developmental Sequences Utilizing a Cognitive-Behavioral Expressive Model - General Concepts of Development - Chapter 4. Pathways of Violent Youth - The Developmental Pathway Model - Chapter 5. General Principles of Cognitive Development - Cognitive Characteristics of Violent Youth - Cognitive Processes of Aggressive Youth - Chapter 6. Affective Development - Affective Responses - Biological Factors - Chapter 7. Clinical Characteristics of Violent Youth - Psychological Testing and Psychiatric Diagnosis - Risk Factors - Clinical Aggression Risk Variables - Dangerousness Index - Chapter 8. The Homicidal Adolescent: Hearts Darkened Before Their Time - Research Review of Characteristics of Juvenile Murders - Typologies - The Psychotic Adolescent Murderer - The Criminal Adolescent Murderer - Interpersonal Conflict - Chapter 9. General Principles in the Treatment of Violent Youth - Cognitive Interventions - Affective Interventions - Behavioral Coping Skills - Environmental Interventions - Pitfalls and Clinical Provocation of Violence - The Discharge of the Violent Youth - Chapter 10. The Clinical Experience of the Unwilling Youth - The Four Types of Mental Health Problems - The Trust-Control Dichotomy - The Problem of the Mental Health Cure-All - Techniques of Intervention with Unwilling Youth - The Therapist's Expectations - Chapter 11. Forensic Psychological Aspects of Care - Some Important Considerations - The Criminalization of Juvenile Justice: The Increasing Role of Forensic Practice in Juvenile Courts - Waiver/Bind Over of Juveniles to Adult Courts - Competency to Stand Trial - Victim Trauma and the Witness Disclosure Process in Child Abuse - Eyewitness Testimony and Victim Recall - Criminal Responsibility and Juvenile Courts - Malingering - Chapter 12. Malpractice: Regarding Each Other Testily - Worrying About Litigation - Malpractice Defined - Confidentiality - Duty to Warn - Post Tarasoff Legislative Responses - Useful Stuff and an Afterword: How to Find a Good Mechanic - Methods of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution - Helping the Helper - Reference Notes - Bibliography - Index