The Efficacy of Being Outnumbered: Harnessing Family-Based Assessment and Treatment
Presenting Author(s): Dr. David Rubin, MD
Date and time: 21 Mar 2025 from 13:00 to 14:00
Location: Wildrose Salon A/B/C
Abstract
Parent and child mental health are inextricably linked, with each having profound influence on the clinical course and outcome of the other. Family therapy is recognized as a powerful intervention for numerous disorders, including depression, anxiety, anorexia, substance abuse and disruptive behavior, with benefits typically exceeding those conveyed to the identified patient. As psychiatrists, and child and adolescent psychiatrists, are increasingly called upon to be leaders in systemic thinking, serving the demands of large populations for whom individual psychiatrists are short in supply, family-based assessment and treatment is critical both as a means of delivering efficient and comprehensive care while honing the required skills
needed for systems-based practice.
This session will briefly summarize the state of youth mental health leading up to and following the pandemic. It will present methods of teaching empirically validated, family-based assessment, as well as review family therapeutic interventions and techniques.
Learning Objectives
1. Identify trends that existed for child and adolescent psychiatry prior to 2020 and how the pandemic affected those trends;
2. Describe impact of chronic stress on the bodies of children and their parents;
3. Discuss empirically based assessment of whole families; and
4. Describe a number of family-based techniques and interventions.
Literature References
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