Treating Childhood Depression with Contextual Emotion Regulation Therapy

This book is the authoritative presentation of contextual emotion regulation therapy (CERT), an innovative intervention expressly designed for depressed children ages 7–13 and their parents. CERT is grounded in decades of research on the development of emotion regulation and on "mood repair" difficulties as a risk factor for clinical depression. Step by step, Maria Kovacs describes ways to teach children skills to modulate feelings of sadness and distress and break the hold of depression symptoms. Extensive therapist, parent, and child exchanges illustrate key treatment principles. Clinicians learn how to structure CERT sessions and implement personalized social–interpersonal, cognitive, behavioral, problem-solving, and psychoeducational interventions. Reproducible tools in the appendices--including forms, posters, and a parent manual--can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.
 

Maria Kovacs, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Kovacs has been internationally recognized for her expertise in childhood depression. Since the 1980s, her research and clinical work have focused on ways to understand, prevent, or mitigate childhood-onset depression. She has led an international team that studied the early childhood development of self-regulating sadness and distress, how emotion regulation problems serve as a risk factor that eventually enables the emergence of clinical depression, and the ways in which family context, physiology, genetics, and personal characteristics can strengthen or counteract this risk factor. The developer of research tools including the Children’s Depression Inventory and the Feelings and Me questionnaires, Dr. Kovacs has lectured extensively on her work both internationally and nationally, and has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals.
 

Preface
Introduction
1. Childhood Depression: Key Features and the Need for Treatment
2. Emotion Regulation and Mood Repair: What the Research Shows
3. Introduction to CERT for Children
4. Getting Ready to Deliver CERT
5. Assessment, Case Formulation, and Treatment Planning
6. The Initial CERT Sessions
7. Treatment of Sadness and Dysphoria
8. Treatment of Nonaffective Symptoms
9. Coping Skills Training: Its Purpose, Components, and Challenges
10. Implementing Coping Skills Training and Ending Therapy
Appendix A. Mood Repair Questionnaires and Monitoring Forms
Appendix B. Posters
Appendix C. Case Formulations and Personalized Training Plans for Four Young Patients
Appendix D. Parent Manual: Overcoming Your Child’s Depression with CERT
References
Index