Workshop Title: A DBT-Informed Parenting Skills Group for Caregivers of Adolescents struggling with significant mental health issues and are vulnerable to at-risk behaviours including addictions.

Co-Presenters: Lisa Azzopardi, Elizabeth Lovrics, & Helen Stolte.

When and Where: The 20th Canadian Collaborative Mental Health Care Conference, taking place on May 10-11, 2019 at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport Hotel in Richmond, British Columbia. Presentation ID#96.

Presentation Type: Interactive Workshop, Prevention & Early Interventions Stream.

Presentation Abstract: This presentation aims to demonstrate how DBT-informed psychoeducational skills-building programs are an effective resource for parents to support and manage their adolescent’s complex mental health and addiction issues, and for enhancing collaboration between service providers, adolescents, and their families.

Though parents’ participatory role in an adolescent’s treatment receives emphasis, barriers to services and organizational structures impede parental collaboration. Intensive supports and skills-based programming available to adolescents in treatment settings often lack complimentary in-home treatment and skills resources. Literature and practice currently endorse multi-family and peer-to-peer support groups for caregivers, yet caregiver programs are sparsely available. In our experience, parents eager for additional learning opportunities express concern that they lack the skills or knowledge to support their youth through treatment and beyond.

To fill this gap, we developed and implemented an innovative, evidence-based DBT Informed Parenting Skills Group (the “Group”). The Group follows an 8-week curriculum in a clinical setting and a one and two-day intensive workshop format in its adapted form, tailored to parents and professionals in the community. The experience, knowledge, and ongoing feedback of participants and professionals, quality improvement methods, and program evaluations guide the evolution of the Group from its design, to implementation and growth. Currently, we are conducting literature reviews and observational research of the Group sessions.

This presentation describes the creation and realization of the experiential Group, some barriers, and objectives. The presentation includes multimedia and interactive demonstrations to explore the curriculum, how the therapist-facilitators teach effective interventions to participants, and popular topics endorsed by participants.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. identify the benefits and opportunities of incorporating DBT-Informed parenting skills programming, delivered in a group setting, into a collaborative care model of holistic care,

2. teach parents/guardians how their behaviour influences their teens, develop strategies to support the unique challenges faced by youth, and enhance the parent’s collaborative role in their adolescent’s journey through mental health treatment, and

3. adapt and implement parenting skills groups into diverse primary health care settings and community settings, and support its inclusion as a viable component of collaborative care.

Target Audience: Interprofessional / intersectoral teams, family physicians and other primary care providers, mental health care providers, psychiatrists and psychologists, administrators and policy makers, other health disciplines working with primary care and/or community care, consumers and family members, educators and their students, and researchers.

For More Information About and To Register for the Conference: https://ubccpd.ca/course/CCMHC2019#overview