Children and Adolescents
The team at Clarity CBT & DBT Center is dedicated to treating anxiety (including social anxiety, selective mutism, phobias), OCD (including body-focused repetitive behaviors such as skin picking, hair pulling, tics, and Tourettes), and depression (including those who engage in self-harm and suicidal behaviors). Explore the following programs for more information.
Parent-only and family sessions are embedded into the treatment plan parents as vital to the therapeutic process. We take a holistic approach by collaborating with providers, such as psychiatrists, pediatricians, school personnel, neuropsychologists, and executive function coaches.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a structured yet flexible approach to treating anxiety and depression, and is recognized as the gold standard treatment for most youth disorders. During therapy sessions, youth work collaboratively with our therapists to achieve specific goals, using data-driven, goal-oriented techniques.
Habit Reversal Training
Habit Reversal Training (HRT) is a type of behavioral therapy to help individuals with repetitive behaviors, such as tics, hair pulling, and skin picking. HRT involves increasing awareness of the behavior, replacing it with an incompatible response, and using social support to reduce the frequency and intensity of the behavior.
Dialectal Behavior Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Children (DBT-C) is a specialized form of therapy designed to help youth who struggle with emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and challenging behavior. It typically involves individual, parent, and family therapy and includes a combination of cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness-based strategies to teach:
- Mindfulness
- Emotion regulation
- Distress tolerance
- Interpersonal effectiveness
DBT for children and adolescents also involves parent coaching to help support and reinforce the child’s skills in their everyday lives. The treatment has been shown to be effective for a range of mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, emotion dysregulation, and self-harm.
Exposure and Response Therapy
Exposure therapy for kids is a type of behavioral therapy that involves repeated exposure to a feared stimulus or situation. The goal of exposure therapy is to help children learn that the feared stimulus or situation is not as dangerous as they might think. Exposure therapy for kids is often used to treat anxiety disorders, such as specific phobias, social anxiety, selective mutism, and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Our clinic is an early adopter in incorporating virtual reality technology as part of exposure therapy.
