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Evaluation ViewAttendees 5

Traditional Workshop - Ticketed

Child / Adolescent - Anxiety

Session: Feeling stuck? FA it out! Putting the Fun Back into Functional Assessment for Kids and Families

Workshop 4 - Feeling Stuck? FA It Out! Putting the Fun Back into Functional Assessment for Kids and Families

Friday, November 17, 2023
12:00 PM – 3:00 PM PST
Location: 403 (Cispus), Level 4
Earn 3 Credit
Ticketed Session
Keywords: Child, Case Conceptualization / Formulation, Clinical Decision Making
Level of Familiarity: Basic to Moderate
Recommended Readings: Chu, B. C., & Pimentel, S. (2023). CBT Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders in Youth. New York: Guilford Press.,   Pimentel, S.S., & DeLapp, R.D. (2022). Superheroes and CBT for Youth, In RD Friedberg & EV Rozmid (Eds.), Creative CBT with Youth Clinical Applications Using Humor, Play, Superheroes, and Improvisation (pp. 143-174), Springer Publications. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99669-7,   Rizvi, S. L., & Ritschel, L. A. (2014). Mastering the art of chain analysis in dialectical behavior therapy. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 21(3), 335-349.,   Hoffman, L. J., & Chu, B. C. (2019). When is seeking safety functional? Taking a pragmatic approach to distinguishing coping from safety. Cognitive & Behavioral Practice, 26(1), 176-185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2018.11.002,   Badin, E., Alvarez, E., & Chu, B. C. (2020). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Child and Adolescent Anxiety: CBT in a Nutshell. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Youth: Tradition and Innovation (pp. 41-71). New York: Humana (Springer).
The ever-lasting challenge in clinical practice is how to address the needs of a seemingly infinite number of clinical presentations and client needs with a limited toolbox of evidence-based practice. How do you address social anxiety in the context of ongoing bullying at school? How do you account for a history of family conflict and neglect? How does one accommodate developmental disabilities and complicated comorbidities? There are few behavioral techniques as straightforward, but also as robust and flexible, as functional assessment. Functional Assessment (FA) is more of a process than a technique, one that prompts the clinician to continuously assess the antecedents or circumstances (e.g., person, place, object, event, thought, feeling, action) that prompts consistent emotional or behavioral responses. Understanding what internal and environmental consequences that maintain functional and impairing patterns can help the clinician to develop a holistic conceptualization of the client.

The current workshop aims to help attendees re-acquaint themselves with this foundational approach and apply to real-world situations. The presenters will highlight strategies to help youth and families become their own best FA detectives – using worksheets and metaphors to sleuth out the puzzles of their own behavioral-emotional traps. Multiple case studies will be presented and attendees will work in small groups to brainstorm case conceptualizations to make treatment plans that target the youth’s primary goals while keeping it interesting and relevant. The presenters will share worksheets and handouts from their newly published text to illustrate FA, chain analysis, case conceptualization, and treatment planning. Attendees may also bring local examples for group consultation. Presenters will moderate a discussion of effective interventions and help attendees tailor established interventions to their local contexts.

Outline:
I. Youth and family cases are ever and increasingly challenging
A. Complex clinical profiles: how comorbidity and severity of psychological disorders requires.
B. Challenging social and family contexts
C. How these challenges require flexibility and adaptation in CBT
II. Functional Assessment
A. Basic premise/principles
B. How FA is inherently contextual and flexible
C. How it aids case conceptualization, treatment planning, and moment-to-moment decision-making
III. Case illustrations in case conceptualization
A. Using FA to tease out common mechanisms across disorders: anxiety, mood, and behavioral
B. Using FA to understand the impact of medical, educational, and developmental conditions in youth
C. Using FA to understand how cultural issues impact the youth, like intergenerational conflict, community trauma and social injustice
IV. Case Illustrations to guide how to respond to moment-to-moment decisions
A. Using FA to guide effective exposures and behavioral experiments to optimize learning and minimize safety behavior
B. Using FA/case conceptualizations to direct assessment of parent-child interactions and family-based exposures
C. Using FA to conduct assessment of risk behaviors.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the session, the learner will be able to:
  • Describe and employ a continuous assessment process using functional assessment to understand the circumstances that prompt and maintain behavioral-emotional traps.
  • Apply the functional assessment process across emotional and behavioral states to personalize conceptualization to diverse clients, problems, and clinical contexts.
  • Instruct youth and caregivers in using FA and chain analysis to identify their own behavioral and parenting traps.
  • Devise a treatment plan based on a personalized FA that incorporates youth, family, and community factors that maintain behaviors.
  • Long-term Goals: Become a more flexible, principles based cognitive-behavioral therapist that uses continuous assessment in their conceptualization and treatment planning.
  • Long-term Goals: Communicate about (e.g., treatment planning, case conceptualization) and teach (e.g., to trainees, colleagues) FA principles and strategies to facilitate continuity of care in interdisciplinary settings