Adolescent Issues, Child Stress and Trauma, Learning Disabilities Family Therapy

Adolescent Issues, Child Stress and Trauma, Learning Disabilities

Adolescent counselling aims to prevent and treat the many issues faced by adolescents. Parents face the responsibility of raising young adults who will shape the future in this world with more temptations, distractions and issues than ever before. Children inadvertently tend to take the blame for situations onto themselves and this can lead to a lot of stress and pressure for them.


Adolescent counselling typically works with adolescents between the ages of 12-18 years in a non-judgmental, safe and caring environment. Here, therapists can help young people to explore any issues they are facing in their relationships with friends, school, and family.

Most adolescents need guidance at one point or another in their lives and adolescent counselling is the perfect medium, especially when your child's behavior has changed. A teenager who has suddenly become withdrawn, stressed, depressed or moody could use someone to talk to. Sometimes teenagers turn to drugs, food, self-harm, bullying, or sex as an outlet for their stress.

If you are concerned that your child seems to be concerned about issues at school, cyber bullying, sexual experimentation, or if he or she has been getting into trouble at school, or if you think he or she might be taking drugs, counselling may be beneficial.

Therapists engage a range of methods to deal with the issues teenagers face. From art and music therapy to cognitive behavioural therapy, there is a type of adolescent counselling that will likely be of benefit.

If you are looking for a counsellor or psychologist with specialized training in adolescent counselling you may want to search the directory to find a professional whose approach will suit you best.

 

Children today are exposed to much more trauma than we were twenty or thirty years ago, and that's why child trauma counselling is such an important tool to help them cope. Once off events, such as sexual abuse, domestic violence, bullying, life-threatening illnesses, natural disasters, or war can leave a child scarred for life.

Long-term exposure to poverty, verbal abuse or milder types of abuse are traumatic too, in fact that can be as devastating to a child as a single catastrophic event.

As with adults, every child has a different way of dealing with similar circumstances or events. Not every person who experiences the same event will become traumatized, but exposure to trauma can result in a variety of symptoms including nightmares, bedwetting, anxiety, depression, disdain for authority, poor grades, moodswings, substance abuse, and self-harm.

Both cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and a range of other therapies can be helpful in treating children who have been exposed to short term trauma. Therapists will usually work with the child on a one-on-one basis to help the child restructure negative thought patterns and self esteem (in the case of abuse, etc.) before calling in the family for family counselling. Family counselling is a great way for the family to find common ground, build problem-solving skills and to help the parents to re-establish themselves as the authority figures in the home.

If you are looking for a counsellor or psychologist with specialized traing in trauma counselling for children you may want to search the directory to find a professional whose approach will suit you best.

Family Therapy

Family Therapy is different from family systems counselling in that it focuses on relationships within the immediate family unit. It can be used as a supplement to other forms of therapy, or it can be the primary treatment plan.

Family therapy sees the unit as a whole, rather than a group of individual member, and this approach can be used to meet a range of of therapeutic outcomes. Instead of focusing on a single family member, family therapy counsellors see individual and relationship problems as the result of issues within the family dynamics. The therapist will identify issues in the patterns that contribute to problems. He or she will then help the clients to work on verbal and nonverbal communication styles to help shift patterns and bring about positive change.

If you are looking for a therapist who offers Family Therapy, please browse our list of practitioners below..

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Sophia Van Vuuren

M.A., R.Psych
Sophia holds a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology and is a Registered Psychologist with the College of Psychologists in British Columbia, #1659. She has worked in the mental health field as a Clinical Psychologist... Read more