Addressing Fears and Anxiety in Periods of Change

Description

Featuring: Karen Levine, PhD

Originally recorded on August 24, 2020

LiveTalks are hour long audio-only podcasts. This LiveTalk is part 3 of the 3-part series Nurturing Relationships through Periods of Change

Description: Periods of change can provoke anxiety for most individuals. During turbulent times such as these, our clients and their families experience a large amount of stress and the resulting anxiety from not knowing what is going to change next. How do we help prepare our children and clients for the unknown? How much information do we give children when they are worried? How do we identify when an anxious or fearful child needs professional help? Join us as we talk to Dr. Karen Levine to address these questions and others during our August Live Talk. Dr. Levine has worked with children and their families for many years to address fears and anxiety. She will introduce us to her Behavior Play Therapy for addressing those fears which is described in her book, Attacking Anxiety. We will also discuss how the sensory and emotional systems are tightly intertwined in infancy and how sensory sensitivities and anxieties often go hand in hand in a developmental progression. Participants will receive .1 AOTA CEUs after taking a brief exam at the end of the talk.

Learning Objectives: By the end of this LiveTalk listeners will be able to:

1. Identify ways to prepare kids for change without knowing the details of what is going to change,
2. Identify 3 approaches to address fears and anxiety in children
3. Determine when children need professional help to address their fears

Course Level: Introductory. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Suitable For: OT/ OTA, educators, parents, EI providers, mental health providers

AOTA:

Process: Intervention – Occupations and Activities

Process: Activity and Occupational Demands – Relevance and importance to Client

Process: Outcomes – Occupational performance, Quality of Life, and Participation

Contact Hours: This course is worth 1.5 contact hours or 0.15 AOTA CEUs.

Completion Requirements: To receive contact hours for this course you must listen to the livetalk in its entirety and complete the accompanying assessment.

About the Speakers: Karen is a Licensed Psychologist with a Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston University (1989), a Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (1985) and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Brandeis University (1982).   She holds an academic appointment as Lecturer in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and as Adjunct Faculty, Lesley University.  She was the co-founder and co-director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Autism Program in the late 1980’s, of the Building Blocks and the Spotlight programs of the Northeast ARC in the late 1990’s.  She formerly worked at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Cambridge Health Alliance. Karen developed a play-based treatment for children with fears and phobias, integrating the evidenced based behavioral tool of Gradual Exposure within a developmental, relationship based model. This approach, described in her book, Attacking Anxiety, is currently called Behavior Play Therapy, and is being studied and manualized by Bonnie Klein-Tasman, Ph.D., at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Karen is the recipient of the 2012 Lesley University Autism Hero Award, and the 2010 Federation for Children with Special Needs Founders Award. She is an ICDL DIR/Floortime Training Leader and Expert DIR® Floortime™ provider.  Karen conducts workshops regionally and nationally.

ADA/Section 504: If you require special accommodations, please contact the Spiral Foundation at admin@thespiralfoundation.org or (617) 969-4410 ext. 231.

Continuing Education:

Occupational Therapy Practitioners/ Occupational Therapy Assistants:  The Spiral Foundation is an Approved Provider of Continuing Education for occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants by the American Occupational Therapy Association.  The assignment of AOTA CEUs does not imply endorsement of specific course content, products, or clinical procedures by AOTA.