Mindful Continuing Education

1. In the behavioral health field, recent focus has been placed on the distinction between suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors, based on key differences in the behaviors’ prevalence, frequency, severity and:

2. Millions of adolescents engage in suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) each year, and such behaviors usually begin between the ages of 14-16.

3. Many interventions designed for children and adolescents incorporate a family component, and they may include the family as the primary focus, a focus on individual skills training that is augmented with family therapy sessions, or treatments where the adolescent is the main focus of the intervention and family sessions are optional or not presented as integral to the treatment plan.

4. Each of the following is an accurate statement about individual cognitive-behavioral therapy for nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors EXCEPT:

5. In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of adolescents with suicide attempts (SAs) or significant SI and comorbid substance use disorders, I-CBT led to reductions in suicidal behavior compared to treatment as usual, and in addition to fewer SAs, the I-CBT group also reported less heaving drinking and marijuana use over the course of treatment.

6. The goal of DBT is to help individuals avoid using harmful strategies such as SITBs to manage their emotional and interpersonal difficulties, but rather to regulate such difficulties in ways that are:

7. In a pilot study that adapted a DBT skills group intervention for children ages 8-11, significant reductions in suicide ideation from pre- to post-treatment were reported, and these SI reductions were clearly attributed to DBT.

8. Which of the following accurately describes Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) for treating suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors?

9. In a study that randomized 73 at-risk students with depression to attend intensive interpersonal therapy in school or treatment as usual school services for six weeks, adolescents receiving IPT reported greater reductions in SI from pre- to post-treatment compared to those receiving TAU, and they reported significant reductions in depression, anxiety, and hopelessness over the course of treatment.

10. Mentalization-Based Treatment for Adolescents (MBT-A) proposes that deliberate self-harm is a reaction to interpersonal stress when individuals are unable to mentalize, or understand how their own and others behaviors are related to prior experiences and current perceptions.

11. Characteristics of support-based interventions for youth with SITBs include:

12. Which of the following is NOT one of the components of efficacious treatments for SITBs in youth?

13. Research clearly indicates that skills training in the areas of affect regulation and problem-solving are the most effective for reducing SIBTs in youth.

14. Issues that must be considered when evaluating the treatment efficacy must include SITB outcome(s), comparison or control condition, general decline in SITBs over time, single trials used to evaluate most treatment families, and high attrition rates as well as low, and differential, rates of treatment dose.

15. Although brief interventions examined to date, including crisis management and increasing hospital access, have not proven effective for reducing SITBs in adolescents, future research is needed to examine brief interventions that may be useful for reducing risk for SITBs during early high-risk periods.

16. Commonly cited functions of self-harm without suicidal intent include emotion regulation, expression and alleviation of psychological distress, and:

17. Generally speaking, the goals of Adolescent DBT include understanding where the problems or symptoms came from, learning to recognize maladaptive emotions and actions, and changing self-destructive patterns that don’t work while developing healthier ones.

18. In a study that compared the outcomes of an intensive outpatient DBT program for self-harming adolescents with private versus public insurance, parent education groups that focused on teaching, reinforcing and generalizing DBT skills in a parental context were a practical necessity of the program.

19. Study results assessing DBT’s promise in improving overall clinical functioning in adolescents with DSH indicated that within an average treatment period of a little more than three months, across all domains of functioning, youth showed:

20. While study findings suggest that youth from higher risk backgrounds who don’t have private insurance can similarly benefit from DBT if given equal access to treatment, results also show that these youth are at higher risk for not completing treatment.

21. Premature withdrawal from the DBT treatment program was clearly attributed to sociocultural factors that influenced youth and parents.

22. In addition to pursuing efforts that will keep youth and their families engaged in DBT treatment to prevent early withdrawal, the authors suggest: