Referents

The New Normal – For Now Yoni Lichtman, LMFT, is a teacher and school counselor at Valley Torah High School (VTHS), a private all-boys high school in Los Angeles, California. Like other schools around the state, COVID-19 forced VTHS classes to shift all classes to an online format. We were very curious to learn what this new distance-learning experience has been like for both his students and for him. Here,

We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s a big deal. But it doesn’t change the fact that teenagers all over the country still need intensive treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. In light of the current regulations, most therapists have shifted over to teletherapy. Likewise, since adolescent intensive outpatient programs (IOP) and partial hospitalization programs (PHP) have been forced to close their brick-and-mortar locations, many have

Families around the U.S. are adapting to a new normal. Not just one new normal, but new patterns in almost every area of life: how they shop, how they work, how they spend free time, how they exercise, and how they maintain relationships with friends and extended family. They’re also adapting to how their kids go to school: if you’re a schoolteacher, that’s where you come in. At some point

People often think therapists don’t have the same kind of problems the rest of us have. They have all the coping mechanisms at their disposal, so they should be fine – right? But the truth is that more than three-quarters of psychologists acknowledge experiencing distress in their personal lives. And almost forty percent say that it’s a problem, because it negatively impacts the care they provide to clients. Psychologists, social

Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, or DMDD, is a relatively new psychiatric disorder described in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Behavioral Disorder (DSM-V, 2013). The diagnosis was created for children with behavioral symptoms that overlap with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but do not exactly match any of them. DMDD was created partly for these teens who could not

Your client is upset about something or another. You know you have to validate. But did you know there are six levels of validation, according to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)? DBT developer Dr. Marsha Linehan identified six ways to validate another person, with each level increasing in difficulty. The higher the level, the more intensely a clinician is validating his/her client. Six Ways to Validate a Person: 1. Nonverbal Validation