Current Trends & Perspectives in Adolescent Mental Health

This presentation will cover a number of relevant topics to today’s world in the treatment of adolescents in mental health.

Presenters:

Megan Smith is an associate professor at Boise State for the School of Public and Population Health. She teaches courses ranging from statistics, to mental health, community engagement, and advocacy. She is the founding Director of Communities for Youth, an Idaho based initiative focused on Upstream Prevention for Youth. Her research focuses on promoting adolescent health.

Janelle Stauffer is the owner of and practitioner at The Resiliency Center of Idaho since 2015 and has been a clinical social worker since 2007. She has also taught at NNU in the past.

Brhe Zolber has been an LCPC since 2011 and a registered play therapist since 2020. She is currently Executive Clinical Director of Recovery Ways Idaho. As a clinician Brhe has worked with youth at Warm Springs Counseling Center and St. Luke's Center for Neurobehavioral Medicine. Brhe was also responsible for starting all of the St. Luke's Health Systems school based counseling in the Boise and Nampa School Districts. 

Learning Objectives for attendees (grouped by presenter)

Megan Smith:

• Define “Upstream Prevention” and explain how it relates to the mental health crisis
• Describe the role of research and data collection in mental health prevention
• Name key risk & protective factors for adolescent mental health identified in local research

Janelle Stauffer:

• Describe the salient aspects of child and adolescent development and applications to clinical practice
• List the key diversity issues affecting children and adolescents and effective means to address them in clinical practice

Brhe Zolber:

• List the barriers to working with children and adolescents and means of overcoming them
• List the legal aspects of working with children and adolescents
• List the principles of working with collateral contacts and employing them in clinical practice