Supporting Troubled Young People: A practical guide to helping with mental health problems

Supporting Troubled Young People provides a vital and much-needed resource for anyone involved with children and young people who are suffering from or at risk of developing, mental health problems.

Problems such as self-harm, eating disorders, and anxiety and depression are increasing, while young men, in particular, are at increasing risk of suicide. This is against a backdrop of NHS CAMH services unable to cope with demand and resources in the voluntary sector being stretched beyond their capacity. This means parents, teachers, social workers and nurses are often the first and only help available. This book gives them a jargon-free, accessible guide to help them assess situations, provide skills and guidance to support children and young people, and know how and where to get more help for them.

• Full of practical tips, advice, exercises and case studies
• Articulates gender, multi-cultural, spirituality and sexuality issues
• Tackles contemporary issues such as cyber bullying, eating disorders and self-harm
• Uses research and established theory in an engaging way enabling the reader to translate ideas into modern multi-cultural practice

Supporting Troubled Young People provides any worker involved in supporting, helping and caring for young people with a practical resource to use in their work as teachers, social workers, nurses, youth workers, doctors, foster carers, residential staff, psychologists and psychiatrists. Parents and young people will also find much of value here.

This book makes a rich contribution to the understanding and treatment of children’s mental health at a time when this is desperately needed. It is well-informed, full of case illustrations to guide the reader, and is written by a compassionate therapist and researcher with a solid grasp of the complex social environment in which children live today.

Dr Chris Nicholson - Head of the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.

Steven Walker was born in the North East of England, a grammar school boy, he is an Alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has an MPhil in Child and Adolescent Mental Health. He qualified as a psychotherapist in 1992 and worked in CAMHS for 20 years as a practitioner and then Head of Child and Adolescent Mental Health at Anglia Ruskin University, where he designed and developed award-winning multi-disciplinary CAMH training. Steven has published 12 text books, presented his research at 10 International Conferences and published over 50 scholarly papers for International Journals.

Steven is a Unicef Children’s Champion, Fellow of the Higher Education Institute, and a member of the Association of Family Therapists. Now semi-retired he still accepts work as an Expert Witness, is a volunteer Psychotherapist with Youth Enquiry Service and volunteers at Essex Wildlife Trust.

Steven Walker trained as a social worker at the London School of Economics and Political Science with a MSc. He qualified as a Systemic Psychotherapist in 1991 after studying at the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, London. He recently completed his MPhil in Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Steven has worked extensively for the past 30 years with children and families in the context of child protection and child and adolescent mental health. He has authored or co-authored Ten books- the latest being Walker, S. (2012) Effective Social Work with Children and Families- putting systems theory into practice, London, Sage, he has presented his research at many National and International Conferences- the latest at the 2012 European Conference for Dramatherapy and Psychotherapy on the subject of Fidel Castro’s Childhood. Steven currently works for a charity offering a Counselling service for troubled young people.