My Program For Juvenile Detention Centers

My program will be based on the model that I created and explained in the first part of the assignment. I chose to do a treatment program for teenage boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen in juvenile detention centers. I will base my script off of this treatment program and my previous model.

Type of Program:

It’s easier to intervene early and to stop the possible environmental factors, which is why there has been lots of research on conduct disorder prevention in early childhood; therefore, there has been very little to no treatment programs for boys in juvenile detention with conduct disorder, especially callous-unemotional. I personally feel like focusing on this can positively impact those with conduct disorder and those around them since many adolescents in juvenile detention with callous-unemotional conduct disorder do end up committing more violent, sometimes deadly, crimes, and end up in prison; per this theory, if this treatment is successful, it could change their lives around and lower the crime rate. Although all chosen participants will get the same treatment, some will only be treated for 6 months, while others will be treated for a yearin order to see how long future treatments should last. This program will be a treatment program, not intervention, because most boys in juvenile detention are teenagers who have already been diagnosed with a psychological evaluation. I think this is the best way to intervene with the disorder because many adolescents in juvenile detention centers do not get the help and attention they need, which can lead to a worsening of their condition (Kasinathan, 2015). It’s also very clear that adolescents who are already getting in trouble with the law and are being detained are heading toward a bad path, so focusing on youth in juvenile detention centers can possibly change their entire life track, which is why the treatment will also be given to detainees without conduct disorder or without callous-unemotional traits; it will allow us to see if this program can help not just those with callous-unemotional conduct disorder, but the general population as well.

Summary of Program and Connection to Model: H

I will be using a pharmacotherapy-multimodal psychotherapy treatment, which will include individual child psychotherapy, medicine, and parent training. The individual sessions will be weekly and will include talks about their jail routine, recognizing emotions versus hostility from others, how their actions affect others, and how to cope with anger and frustration without being aggressive. These sessions will hopefully allow the adolescents to open up and to feel more comfortable in case they feel unable to open up in front of their families (for those whose families were/are abusive). This should interact with the hypervigilance to hostile cues, verbal deficits, biased and limited repertoires, and triggers for violence inhibitors mechanism, if VIM is present, which should lead to a decrease in persistent antisocial behavior, proactive and reactive aggressive behavior, and lack of empathic behavior, according to the model and to previous treatments (Datyner et al., 2016). The medicine will be given based on the severity of their conduct disorder and on other mental illnesses they might have, which shall be dictated in a psychological exam, and will include mood stabilizers, antipsychotic medication, and ADHD medication. This should lessen violent and aggressive behavior, as well as executive dysfunction.As seen in Masi et al. (2016), when medicine was combined with other treatments, aggressive behavior, rule-breaking, and other traits lessen more than it did for those in treatment without medicine. Parent training sessions will happen every other week and will include one or both parents, the adolescent, and the psychologist. Per the model, this should lower the adverse and aggressive environment, and to hopefully lower the trauma, abuse, deprivation environmental factors. It will also help the families to learn to cope and to be more supportive, as well as to understand the disorder more. According to Elizur et al. (2016), parent training decreased conduct problems, callous-unemotional traits, effortful control, parental distress, parental helplessness, as well as negative parenting, but increased positive parenting.

Participants:

The participants will be boys between fourteen and eighteen years old from five juvenile detention centers in Georgia who have either about six or twelve months left to serve. They will be selected based on psychological evaluations to see which adolescents have callous-unemotional conduct disorder. There will be four different groups: those without conduct disorder following a year-long program, those with conduct disorder following a year-long program, those with callous-unemotional conduct disorder following a year-long program, and those with callous-unemotional conduct disorder following a six-months-long program. I chose adolescent boys in juvenile detention centers in Georgia because I decided to focus my model on callous-unemotional disorder and with my internship at the Federal Defenders’ Program, I’ve found that many of the men given the death sentence were at some point in juvenile detention and had been diagnosed with callous-unemotional conduct disorder.

Goals and Methods:

This will be individual session 3 of session 52 for those with a year of treatment and individual session 2 of session 26 for those with six months of treatment. This session’s goal is to understand more about the participants overall, to learn more about why they are in juvenile detention and their daily social life there, as well as understanding more about their prior home environment, and to see how they view others. It will mostly include talking between the psychologist and the participants, looking at the participant’s history and family history and giving the participants scenarios and seeing how they would respond. Goals for prior sessions are to get to know the participants and get them comfortable with the psychologist, and goals for future sessions are to learn about the way they view others and teaching them to cope with perceived aggression and hostility without being violent and aggressive. Goals for the overall treatment are to decrease aggression and hostility, to increase positive parenting, and to lower criminal rates, as well as the number of adolescents in juvenile detention who go to jail.

Evaluation:

I will give surveys to the participants (about their own emotions, their feelings toward others, and how they feel about violence) and to their families (about their child and about their feelings over their control of the situation) before the treatment, right after the treatment, five years after, and fifteen years after the treatment. There will be interviews with the participants, their families, and their friends before, after, five years after, and fifteen years after the treatment as well, to get more information about how the treatment affected them. There will also be a survey given out before and after the treatment to those working in the juvenile detention center to see how the participants’ behavior changed due to the treatment. Lastly, there will be a psychological evaluation done at the end of the treatment to see if there are any psychological changes compared to the evaluation done before the treatment.