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A Child Depression Training Course for Health Care Professionals: Change a Child's Life for the Better...

The non-profit REACH Institute now offers primary care and specialty mental care professionals intensive coaching in the diagnosis and treatment of child and adolescent depression (major depressive disorder, dysthymia, and depression NOS).  This course is designed for family physicians, pediatricians, GPs, nurses and nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, and neurologists (as well as child and adolescents psychiatrists who want to be up to speed on “the state of the art” in delivering the latest scientifically proven treatments for child depression.  Because this depression training course teaches an integrated (psychotherapy AND medication) approach to treatment, non-prescribing health care professionals may not find that this training course fully meets their needs, and are encouraged instead to consider another one of REACH's training courses, such as a training course focusing specifically on how to provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depressed children and teens.

Led by Peter S. Jensen, MD, former Associate Director of NIMH (Child & Adolescent Research), author of over 300 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and author/editor of over a dozen books for researchers, clinicians, and parents, this course brings together four crucial components in diagnosing and treating depression and depression-related disorders, and achieving optimal outcomes for children and families.

These four components of childhood depression knowledge and skill are 1) providing an accurate diagnosis of depression using reliable rating tools, 2) delivering state-of-art medication titration and medication monitoring, while minimizing side effects, 3) learning how to deliver an evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy intervention that helps children (and families) learn skills that medication cannot teach, such as social skills, improved parent-child relationships, coping and problem solving, and self-monitoring, and 4) how to individualize your depression treatment plan for each child and family, including considering the role of parent and youth treatment preferences.

1. Depression Assessment and Diagnosis

Students learn the differential diagnosis of depressive symptoms, and how to clearly differentiate it from other conditions such as bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and demoralization and low self-esteem.  This depression training course assists health care practitioners in identifying the DSM symptoms and impairments related to the various depression diagnoses.  Practice in using and scoring depression symptom rating scales is provided, not just to help evaluate the child, but also to educate and improve therapeutic communications and the treatment alliance between the health care professional and the child and family.  Appropriate use of other symptom rating scales are also included in this depression training course, such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder.  Rating scales for all relevant disorders are provided for free and continuing use with your patients.

Comprehensive and complete depression assessment methods also require that the health care develop expertise in interviewing skills, and learn how to elicit sensitive information such as suicidal thoughts and behaviors or harsh parenting methods, become skilled in developing a therapeutic alliance so that parents and youth are able to adequately provide a thorough medical and psychosocial history and mental status exam.  These skills are taught and modeled in engaging lectures, and further consolidated through skills practice exercises, role-plays, and small group learning formats.

2. Depression Medication Management

Even experienced clinicians may be uncertain how medications such as SSRIs should be titrated, and how full adherence to the medication components of your treatment plan is achieved. This depression training course provides medical health care professionals the essential knowledge and skills about which medications should be selected next if the first or second medication treatment trial fails, hand how to counsel parents and help them overcome fears or resistance to use of medication or pursue a mental health referral. In this training course, health care practitioners will also learn to apply specific methods for optimal monitoring of medication benefits, effects, and side effects.  All of these depression treatment management skills are taught and further reinforced through the various training course methods – role-plays, skills practice, and small group learning.

3. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Training

The third component of this depression training course consists in learning how to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy that helps children (and families) learn what medication cannot teach, specifically social skills, improved parent-child relationships, problem-solving and coping skills, and self-monitoring.  Specific CBT techniques taught and practiced for delivery and teaching to children and parents are: 1) monitoring depressive symptoms; 2) identifying negative automatic thoughts and beliefs; 3) disputing negative beliefs; 4) coping and problem-solving.

4. Individualizing  Your Depression Treatment Plans

One major problem many health care practitioners experience is how to optimally tailor their intervention plan to each child and family so that it works for that specific family.  For example, medication adherence is a problem for 50% of families, but few clinicians are aware of how to deal with this, and how to encourage families to candidly describe their fear, anxiety, and guilt that often undermine treatment adherence.

Other problems related to individualizing treatment plans for depressive disorders relate to essential skills for all physicians treating depression: 1) selecting the optimal medication, 2) titrating the medication to best dose effects, 3) implementing strategies to minimize common side effects; 4) choosing alternative medications when the initial medication is either ineffective or has too many side effects; 5) individualizing the treatment when the child has comorbid disorders such as anxiety, ADHD, oppositional defiant or conduct disorder, tics or Tourettes, or severe mood dysregulation and irritability.

This depression training course also guides students in using youth and parent rating scales to track treatment response, individualize the child’s treatment plan for specific problems at home or school or in special areas of functioning (social skills, academic performance, parent-child relationships), how to use rating scales to increase parent, child, and teacher understanding of depression and participation in the treatment plan, and how to use them to maximize treatment outcomes.

Finally, all four of these essential treatment components are applied and practiced with specific cases, and students learn when each component should be applied.  This course is ideal for many current practitioners – pediatricians, family practitioners, GPs, psychiatrists and neurologists, most of whom were  were not trained during residency in depression medication management or cognitive behavioral therapy procedures. This course is of value for all qualified healthcare practitioners, with or without previous psychotherapy experience.

Training is available that provides accreditation for continuing medical professional education. Students learn how to work with children and families, using a combination of hands-on practice of skills, engaging lectures that are applicable to your daily work, role-play, experiential exercises, small group practice sessions, video demonstrations, and skills practice exercises. The total training period is up to 12 months, beginning first with an intensive face-to-face coaching program, and followed up with distance learning methods and conference calls in small peer learning groups.

Please contact us to learn about our next available depression training course dates, or help us bring a training to your city: usually, 20 therapist-participants need to enroll for the training to be effective (and cost-effective, from a REACH perspective).  Or for more details about how to register for this program, go to the "About Us" webpage, and contact the REACH Institute's Executive Director, Lisa Hunter Romanelli, PhD