The Collaborative Problem Solving Approach: Treatment for Explosive Noncompliant Children and Adolescents

Friday, September 30, 2005
With Ross Greene, Ph.D.

Location: Freeport -

Harraseeket Inn 162 Main Street Freeport, Maine

Program Description: Explosive/noncompliant children and adolescents frequently exhibit severe behaviors - intense temper outbursts, noncompliance, volatility, mood instability, verbal and physical aggression, and destruction of property - that can make life extraordinarily challenging for themselves and their parents, siblings, teachers, and classmates. Such youths may be diagnosed with any of various psychiatric disorders including oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette's disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, nonverbal learning disability, and Asperger's disorder. Regardless of diagnosis,however, their behavior is poorly understood and difficult to change.

Dr. Ross Greene and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have pioneered a practical approach - called the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) Approach - to working with such youths at home and school. This approach is described in Dr. Greene's highly acclaimed, best-selling book, The Explosive Child. The book has been featured on the Oprah Show, Dateline NBC, and Good Morning America.

In this workshop, Dr. Greene will present, as an alternative to the traditional behavior management model, an approach aimed at improving self-regulation, affective modulation, collaborative problem solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance, and decreasing adversarial adult-child interactions. This approach emphasizes a proactive (rather than reactive) mind set and the matching of treatment ingredients to the needs of the individual children and adults.

About the Speakers: Ross Greene, Ph.D., is Director of Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology at the Clinical & Research Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he specializes in the treatment and study of explosive/noncompliant children and adolescents and their families.

He is also Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Greene is the author of the highly acclaimed book, The Explosive Child. He has also authored numerous articles, chapters and scientific papers in behavioral assessment and social impairment in children, school and home-based interventions for children with disruptive behavior disorders, and student-teacher compatibility. He has conducted hundreds of presentations in the U.S. and internationally. He and Dr. Stuart Ablon provide 3 day advanced trainings in Massachusetts each summer.

In addition, Dr. Greene has founded the CPS Institute, a nonprofit organization established to fund research on explosive/noncompliant children and adolescents and to fund services to underprivileged youths who might not have access to quality mental health services.

Educational Objectives: Participants will be able to describe the following:

• How different explanations for interpretations of explosive/noncompliant behavior can lead to dramatically different approaches to intervention
• Why compliance does not come naturally to all children, and the disparate factors which may contribute to the development of explosive/noncompliant behavior
• The importance of matching treatment ingredients to the needs of individual children, families and teachers
• A conceptual and practical model of intervention - flowing from social learning theory for dealing more effectively with explosive/noncompliant children at home and school
• The necessity of a multimodal, collaborative approach to intervention incorporating medical psychological, education, and social components