The Essential Guide to Treating Child and Adolescent Anxiety

Supporting anxious kids means empowering anxious parents.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Steve O’Brien knows firsthand how challenging, even overpowering, it can be when a child presents with anxiety. So often, their struggles send a ripple effect that disrupts the entire family system.

In The Essential Guide to Treating Child and Adolescent Anxiety, clinicians will find an integrative, whole-family approach for treating the most common anxiety-related issues in childhood, including school fears, social anxiety, excessive worry, separation anxiety, and more. Drawing from cognitive behavioral, family systems, and client-centered therapies, this book provides over 75 handouts, worksheets, scripts, and tips to help you navigate the most common treatment obstacles so you can empower anxious children and their parents to live healthier, happier lives.

You’ll learn how to:

• Navigate the initial session and build rapport with parents
• Provide child-friendly psychoeducation on anxiety
• Assist families in developing healthier habits to decrease household stress
• Provide intensive parent consultation
• Break the anxiety-reassurance-repeat cycle
• Use the 3 R’s (recognize, relax, redirect) of anxiety management
• Reframe how parents and teachers think about “misbehavior”
• And more!

 

Author

Steve O’Brien, PsyD

Dr. Steve O’Brien is a clinical psychologist with close to 30 years of experience treating children, adolescents, and families in his Clearwater, Florida practice. His specialty areas include treatment for childhood anxiety and depression, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and divorced/blended family adjustment. Dr. O’Brien utilizes an integrative model which tailors treatment to the developmental level of both children and parents. His approach integrates individual child therapy with intensive parental and familial interventions. Dr. O’Brien has worked in a variety of clinical settings including community mental health centers, psychiatric hospitals, and medical clinics. He earned his PsyD at Nova Southeastern University and received specialized training in applied developmental psychology. Pediatric, child psychiatric, and school consultation is a significant part of his clinical work, and he is a frequent guest speaker in the Tampa Bay area. Dr. O’Brien previously worked as a continuing education provider for the Juvenile Welfare Board, and is a well-received speaker for PESI, training professionals primarily in the areas of child/adolescent mental health treatment and complex family issues.