This document discusses skills and programs that help develop resilience in youth. It summarizes: 1) Five key social competencies for resilience: critical thinking, self-concept, social connections, coping ability, and control through cognitive strategies. 2) A program called Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS) that teaches problem solving skills to reduce risky behavior through lessons on topics like alternative solutions and consequences. 3) Cognitive behavioral techniques like cognitive restructuring that help change faulty or negative thinking patterns.

2. Chapter 13
14 May 2013
Psych 3C11
08:00- 8:45
L. Du Plessis
University of Johannesburg

3.  Resilient youths develop social competencies
that help them to negotiate life’s challenges
and to emerge as healthy, strong and
contributing individuals.

4.  1.Critical School Competencies
 2. Concept of Self
 3. Connectedness
 4. Coping Ability
 5. Control: Strategies for cognitive change

5.  Teach
 Rationale, explanation and instruction for skills
 Show
 Model the skill (either by video or by trainer)
 Practice
 Role play in the session
 Reinforce
 Provide feedback and encouragement
 Apply
 Students practice in “real life,: record their
experiences and report back.

6.  Developed after 30 years of research, this program by Spivack and
Shure (Shure, 2006) is designed to enhance interpersonal thinking
skills that reduce or prevent high-risk behavior.
 Lessons are grouped into “pre-problem solving skills” and
“Problem solving skills”
 Prevention Strategy for Children: Interpersonal Cognitive Problem
Solving
 Learn how to think, not what to think
 Rebelliousness, aggression etc all NB early predictors of later
delinquency, alcohol and drug abuse, psychopathology and school
dropout
 Lack of adequate problem-solving (PS) skills
 The earlier the skills can be taught the better!
 Problem solvers draw on repertoire of social behavioural and
social competencies and knowledge
 IQ scores not related to PS skills

7.  Includes good academic skills and academic
survival skills
 Includes social competency: appropriate
behaviour, friendships, nonviolent resolution,
assertiveness and resistance to peer pressure
 Training in life skills

8.  These lessons include
 Teaching the ICPS vocabulary
 Teaching cause-and-effect relationships
 Encouraging listening and paying attention skills
 Helping children identify feelings
▪ If people’s feelings are to be considered in decision
making, it is necessary to identify, understand and
verbalize

9.  These skills are taught through lessons on
 Alternative solutions
▪ Recognize problems and generate possible solutions
 Consequences
▪ Consequential thinking and “what might happen next”
 Solution-consequence pairs
▪ Practice in linking solutions with consequences
▪ Children suggest a solution to a problem, think of a
possible consequence and then return to the same
problem and – repeat – until goal is reached.

10.  Older students are taught means-ends
thinking, which involves:
 Planning a series of specific actions to attain a
given goal
 Recognizing and devising ways around potenial
obstacles
 In addition, teachers are encouraged to help
students think about hypothetical situations
and apply skills to actual problems
throughout the day

11.  Optimism
 Research has demonstrated a link between
pessimism and eventual depression
 Optimism is an ability to think positively about
one’s situation and future, even in the face of
difficulty
 Optimistic employ an explanatory style in which
they think a bed event is temporary, limited to the
specific event and with many possible causes
other than themselves.

12.  Optimism: What is?
 Internal vs. external blame: personalise all (Learn
to take responsibility for events)
 Sometimes vs. always: failure is permanent
 Cause of bad events: pervasive, impact is
permanent and global rather than specific
 Global explanations: bad events: give up on
everything. Learn to be specific

13.  Thought catching (saying negative things to
self)
 Evaluation (automatic & habitual
thoughts/beliefs)
 Accurate explanations (to change automatic
thoughts)
 Decatastrophizing (worst case mostly
unlikely)

14.  Cognitive Restructuring
 Based on the assumption that faulty cognitions cause
detrimental self-evaluations and emotional distress,
leading to behavioral problems
 The goal is to help people develop their cognitive
ability to recognize faulty self-statements and to
substitute more positive ones
 Rational-emotive behaviour therapy (REBT): thinking
creates feelings therefore change faulty thinking
(Ellis: ABCDE model)
 Beck’s CT model

15.  Rational-emotive behaviour therapy (REBT):
 Major assumption: thoughts create feelings.
 A: Activating event
 B: Belief
 C: Consequence
 D: Dispute (evidence, alternatives, implications,
usefulness)
 E: Emotional effects

16.  The child learns to recognize the activating
event (A), the corresponding belief (B) about
the even and the emotional and behavioral
consequences
 The counselor then helps the person to
dispute (D) the old belief system and attend
to the new emotional and behavioral effects
(E) of more rational thinking

17.  Practice REBT:
 Think of something stressful in your life… (like
exams), apply REBT

18.  Beck’s CT:
 CognitiveTherapy: cognitive triad, schemas and
cognitive errors
 Cognition and effect: interactive
 Cognitive triad: negative view of the world, self and
future
 Cognitive schema: stable cognitive pattern that
individuals create from triad
 Cognitive error: negative schemas (core belief)
maintained and exacerbated by faulty info processing

19.  Clients are taught to
 Recognize the connections between cognitions,
affect and behavior
 Monitor negative automatic thoughts
 Examine evidence related to distorted automatic
cognitions
 Substitute more realistic interpretations for
distorted cognitions
 Learn to identify and modify dysfunctional beliefs

20.  Connectedness with others is critical in
people’s lives
 Connectedness involves both intrapersonal
awareness and interpersonal skills
 Training in interpersonal communication
 Training in Assertiveness Skills
▪ Including nonverbal communication
▪ Resistance and refusal training

21.  Many at-risk young people are affected by
stress and anxiety
 Relaxation and imagery to helpful tools to
offset some of the negative aspects of
anxiety and stress.
 Beneficial relaxation
 Progressive relaxation
 Visual imagery
 Affirmations

22.  At-risk children often struggle with effective
decision making
 egocentric perspective-taking
 Perception of limited alternative
 Social-cognitive distortions
▪ Make errors when interpreting social stimuli and
misjudge consequences of hostile acts

23.  Problem-solving steps
 Define the problem
 Examine vairables
 Consider alternatives
 Isolate a plan
 Do action steps
 Evaluate effects

24.  Self management: the ability to maintain or
alter goal-directed behavior without
depending on discernable external forces
 Self control: refers to control over one’s
affective, cognitive and behavioral reactions
 Helps prevent problem situations, limit negative
emotional reactions, resist problematic behaviors
and delay gratification

25.  Self management and self-control are both
part of self-regulation.
 Self-regulation required the following skills
 Self assessment
 Self-monitoring
 Self-reinforcement

26.  Communication and life skills, cognitive
change strategies and coping techniques are
NB.The earlier these skills are taught and
learnt, the better. Reinforcement is also
necessary.