Strategies for Preventing Youth Violence and Conflict

Catalog description

This course is designed to inform the counseling student about the strategies that are available to them as counselors in working with youths and their parents that prevents or greatly reduces the probability of youths being involved in violent incidents. The focus will be on prevention, rather than cure, but will also deal with strategies for working with youth and their parents should any form of violence occur, in spite of best efforts to prevent it. We will look at the problem of “bullying” and gangs and how to deal with these problems. The course will also cover how to spot and deal with potentially deviant “outliers” –i.e. , youth who may be depressed and suicidal or otherwise mentally ill, and who may be potential perpetrators of violence, and also with depressed youth less inclined to outward-directed violence, but considered suicide. We will also look at best strategies for dealing with and ameliorating the traumatic effects of these and other forms of violence, should they occur.