Behavioral activation is a useful tool to help your students who are experiencing depressive symptoms. Behavioral activation involves helping your student re-engage in pleasurable activities, so they experience positive reinforcement and improvement in mood. When individuals are depressed, it is common for them to withdraw from their environment and change their habits. This removes them from the positive reinforcement of activities that they once enjoyed. By re-engaging in such activities, many experience enjoyment and feelings of competency, and this positive reinforcement increases the likelihood they will continue to engage in such activities. Following principles from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), over time, the cycle of engagement and positive reinforcement will help improve their mood and reduce symptoms of depression (e.g., feelings of loneliness, fatigue, worthlessness). That is, by changing our behaviors, we can also change our thoughts and feelings. When using this intervention, you will help the student choose specific activities that they enjoy and help them develop a plan to engage in these activities regularly.
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Behavioral Problem-Solving Consultation is a multi-step process that can be facilitated by a school mental health professional to help teachers identify, define and understand student behaviors, select and implement interventions with high quality and consistency, and evaluate outcomes. Although the teacher is the one implementing the intervention, a consultant can offer support, encouragement, guidance, and accountability, all of which can increase the likelihood that interventions and strategies are being implemented and evaluated in a high-quality manner.
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Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) is an intervention that involves working directly with caregivers with the goal of helping them implement strategies to improve their child’s behavior. BPT gives parents strategies for (a) enhancing positivity in their relationship with their children and (b) building a predictable, consistent environment to help their child thrive. BPT can help children’s behavior improve at home, school, and other settings by developing clear behavioral expectations to set their child up for success, reinforcing behaviors that align with those expectations, and providing feedback and guidance for behaviors that do not align with expectations.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a frequently used model of counseling. CBT is based on two foundational principles: a) our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are related, and b) by changing any one of these, we can produce change in the others. CBT is a combination of two schools of therapy: cognitive therapy and behavior therapy. Cognitive therapy focuses on modifying maladaptive or unhelpful thoughts as the primary way to change behavior and improve student functioning, whereas behavior therapy focuses on changing patterns of reinforcement and punishment as the primary way to change behavior and improve student functioning. CBT combines these two schools of thought and takes principles from both. From the CBT perspective, some of the problems that students experience are, in part, due to unhelpful patterns of thoughts and behavior that they learn over time. We can help students who are struggling by helping them use effective coping skills and new or helpful ways of thinking and behaving.
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Emotion regulation strategies are tools that students can use to effectively communicate about and manage their emotions even when they feel overwhelmed. Teachers describe the skill of interest, demonstrate the skill for students, give students the opportunity to practice the skills when calm, and give positive and constructive feedback about skill application. Teachers also prompt or encourage students to apply the skills at the first signs of emotion dysregulation.
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Interpersonal skills training is a program to help students improve their social skills by helping a student understand how their behaviors are perceived by others while allowing them to have autonomy over how they want to be viewed by others. Once they know how they wish to be considered by others, they work to align their behaviors to promote that perception. During interpersonal skills training, students also learn how to adjust their behavior in various settings to be consistent with their goals in that setting. It is typically easiest to begin with their peer context – in other words how they wish to be perceived by other students their age. Other contexts are added later and include interactions with teachers in the classroom and interactions with caregivers at home.
Interpersonal skills training was designed for middle and high school students and is different from traditional social skills training in several ways. First, it focuses on the core concepts of real self (how you are currently seen by others) and ideal self (how you want to be seen by others). Second, the process is designed to help students set individual goals for personal growth. Third, the mechanisms of change include (a) high rates of practice and repetition in a peer setting for skill development, coupled with (b) feedback and discussion from a coach to facilitate student perspective taking and changes in behavior, and (c) a structured process for generalizing skills practice and skills development to new contexts.
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