Adolescent Therapy That Really Works: Helping Kids Who Never Asked for Help in the First Place

"I can thoroughly recommend it to any educational and child psychologist who has frequent eyeball-to-eyeball contact with adolescents and who wishes to develop a functional, but supportive, working relationship and adopt a balanced position between the needs of the school and those of a young person finding their way into adulthood." ―DECP Debate

Edgette proposes a unique approach to relating to adolescents in therapy. Focusing on establishing genuine and unaffected relationships between therapists and teens, this book offers techniques for clinicians who want to engage and connect with their adolescent clients. The goal is to bring about conversations that are candid and therapeutically effective so that teens and their families can find dignified and durable solutions to their problems. Case examples and stories from Edgette’s own practice illustrate how therapists can successfully navigate difficult encounters, avert power struggles, and avoid dead-end dialogues that bore teenage clients and stall treatment. Thorough and lucidly written, Adolescent Therapy That Really Works shows therapist how to become partners with their clients, maintain their authority while also drawing teens into comfortable conversation, and read body language and facial expressions to better convey understanding and respect. Every therapist who works with adolescents and their families will benefit from the wisdom, skill, and honesty exhibited in Edgette’s therapeutic approach.

Dr. Janet Sasson Edgette is a psychologist practicing in Exton, Pennsylvania who, for the past twenty-five years, has specialized in providing services for children, teenagers, young adults, and their parents. She also specializes in providing sport and performance psychology enhancement services to athletes and performing artists. Janet is the author of six books on parenting, counseling, and sport psychology, including the popular parenting paperback, Stop Negotiating with Your Teen: Strategies for Parenting Your Angry, Manipulative, Moody, or Depressed Adolescent, and her critically acclaimed book for mental health professionals entitled, Adolescent Therapy That Works: Helping Kids Who Never Asked for Help in the First Place. Her most recent book is called The Last Boys Picked: Helping Boys Who Don't Play Sports Survive Bullying and Boyhood. 

Janet's work in the areas of child, preteen, and adolescent therapy, family counseling, and parent effectiveness has put her in great demand as a therapist, speaker, workshop leader, and consultant to schools and mental health agencies. She has conducted professional workshops and educational programs for psychiatrists, psychologists, school counselors, social workers, therapists, probation officers, caseworkers, school administrators, teachers, parents, and foster parents all around the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, Russia, Croatia, and Germany.

Janet is the mother of three teenager boys herself. She also is an avid horseback rider, having competed in the show jumping divisions in almost every major horse show along the east coast. For the past six summers, Janet has returned to what she calls her favorite place on earth--Camp Forest and Indian Acres in Fryeburg, Maine--where she spent her childhood summers and nows makes herself available as a consultant. Please visit her website, janetedgette.com, for more information and to view her blog and speaking calendar.