Counseling Youth: Systemic Issues and Interventions

Counseling Youth: Systemic Issues and Interventions highlights the nature of counseling youth and implementing interventions from a systemic perspective. This systemic perspective focuses on the multitude of issues and systems that impact youth and mental health, such as academic progress and achievement; emotional and behavioral problems; and overall behaviors that impact physical and emotional well-being. As these aforementioned issues are addressed, highlighted are the roles of various systems, including schools, mental health facilities, medical facilities, juvenile justice systems, and refugee services, as well as services geared to special populations, such as LGBT+ youth and undocumented immigrant minors. Included in this text is a brief overview of child-adolescent development that then focuses on issues, policies, and services for counseling youth in schools, communities, and clinical settings. Central to this book are the issues that families, schools, and communities are having difficulty addressing, such as trauma, abuse, suicide, teen pregnancy, and antisocial behavior, and the key to addressing these issues by utilizing a variety of resources within the system and advocating for systemic change. Utilized is a multidimensional focus on development, issues, and strategies, providing an integrative approach so that clinicians (present and future) have an understanding of the theory, concerns, policies, and approaches for working youth. This book also utilizes a transtheoretical approach and attempts to provide an overview of approaches and interventions regardless of theoretical approach. Unlike books that focus on a singular model, this approach is to speak to a variety of individuals training to be clinicians from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., social work, marriage and family therapy, counseling, psychology).