Blogs

This is an interview with a real parent who used Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) to help themself better communicate with their child.

When your child is struggling with depression, it can feel challenging to identify ways to help them manage their emotions and improve distressing symptoms. Many decades of research on interventions for depression has told us that a combination of therapy and medication is often most effective. The best approach for each child or teen may look different, and getting an assessment and specific recommendation from a mental health professional is the ideal way to search for and select treatment. An approach for treating depression, that has a large evidence base, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Within CBT for depression, treatment often involves an intervention called behavioral activation.

The frontal lobe in the human brain, and specifically the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for managing executive function. Research has shown that anything that damages the brain tissue of this area can impact an individual’s executive functioning skills, but damage to the prefrontal cortex is not the only cause of executive function challenges.

Conversations about Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) have come to the forefront of social media, especially for caregivers who have children that consistently are non-compliant with demands and may have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. While PDA has become a hot topic, it is not defined or recognized as a mental health diagnosis on its own. So, what is it?

Executive functioning skills include the methods that allow us to make plans, solve problems, and adapt to new situations. Core to these abilities are the skills of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition control. It is important to note that these skills are not fixed at a certain level, and they develop over time for all people. While we know that executive function abilities decline with aging, and individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD have impaired executive function, there are ways to keep and improve these skills.