Practically Speaking: Behind the Episode - MATCHing Treatment to Kids’ and Teens’ Needs
Military children experience unique psychological needs due to the challenges associated with their parent's service. While some challenges are universal (peer pressure, academic performance, family stressors), some challenges are unique to military families.
Click here to listen to the episode! “MATCHing Treatment to Kids’ and Teens’ Needs”
For example, military children often grapple with the stress of frequent relocations. Family relocations can disrupt kids’ and teens’ sense of stability and make it difficult to form friendships. Additionally, the deployment of a parent can lead to emotional stress and anxiety. Not only do children and teens worry about their deployed parent, but the demands on and dynamics of the non-deployed family often change as well. Trauma exposure further complicates family dynamics and the child’s ability to cope.
These are just a couple of the unique challenges faced by military children. Providers who work with military families therefore need to be prepared to help young people presenting with a variety of needs. The Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma or Conduct Disorder (MATCH-ADTC) is an evidence-based treatment that can meet many of these needs in children and teens aged 5-15.
On this episode of CDP’s Practical for Your Practice, we’re joined by Khristine Heflin, LCSW, a Military Behavioral Health Child Social Worker. Khristine has extensive training and experience in MATCH-ADTC and gives us a thoughtful introduction to this modality. As Khristine describes, MATCH-ADTC is a modular treatment targeting four common concerns for youth: anxiety, depression, trauma exposure, and conduct disorder. The 33 modules enable providers to provide evidence-based techniques to fluidly address the concerns and stressors most likely to be encountered in clinical practice.
Khristine speaks from her own experience and describes what she finds most exciting about MATCH-ADTC:
“MATCH was distilled from different evidence-based treatments to make sure that clinicians are serving our young people appropriately. Sometimes what happens is when clinicians work with young people, they present to the clinic not just with one problem. So they're not presenting with just anxiety. Oftentimes, if not all times, our children are coming in with comorbid conditions or significant psychosocial stressors. And instead of clinicians trying to on the fly figure out what should I do for this condition … and essentially not be providing evidence-based work, in comes MATCH, where you have what's called a “focus interference framework.”
She goes on to describe how MATCH-ADTC was developed based on real world clinical presentations, versus solely in academic or research settings:
“What MATCH strived to do was to treat young people with comorbid conditions in community health centers, community treatment centers, and really gather their information and their data from particular types of kids versus researching in academia, for example, and where we might have someone who presents only with anxiety or presents only with depression. I really appreciate the intentionality behind working with young people and making sure that this is actually going to be something that we can [use to] treat our young people.”
In addition to providing an overview of MATCH-ADTC, Khristine describes how this treatment modality may be particularly helpful for our military children and provides resources for providers who want to pursue training in this approach. Of course, she also shares her “EBP confessional,” reminding us that avoiding discomfort is not a good long-term strategy for providers. Listen to the full discussion here: MATCHING Treatment to Kids' and Teens' Needs.
If you have a question or topic you want to suggest for a future episode, feel free to drop us a voice-mail message at https://www.speakpipe.com/cdpp4p.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Carin Lefkowitz, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and Senior Military Behavioral Health Psychologist at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Lefkowitz earned her M.A. and Psy.D. in clinical psychology at Widener University, with a concentration in cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Military children experience unique psychological needs due to the challenges associated with their parent's service. While some challenges are universal (peer pressure, academic performance, family stressors), some challenges are unique to military families.
Click here to listen to the episode! “MATCHing Treatment to Kids’ and Teens’ Needs”
For example, military children often grapple with the stress of frequent relocations. Family relocations can disrupt kids’ and teens’ sense of stability and make it difficult to form friendships. Additionally, the deployment of a parent can lead to emotional stress and anxiety. Not only do children and teens worry about their deployed parent, but the demands on and dynamics of the non-deployed family often change as well. Trauma exposure further complicates family dynamics and the child’s ability to cope.
These are just a couple of the unique challenges faced by military children. Providers who work with military families therefore need to be prepared to help young people presenting with a variety of needs. The Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma or Conduct Disorder (MATCH-ADTC) is an evidence-based treatment that can meet many of these needs in children and teens aged 5-15.
On this episode of CDP’s Practical for Your Practice, we’re joined by Khristine Heflin, LCSW, a Military Behavioral Health Child Social Worker. Khristine has extensive training and experience in MATCH-ADTC and gives us a thoughtful introduction to this modality. As Khristine describes, MATCH-ADTC is a modular treatment targeting four common concerns for youth: anxiety, depression, trauma exposure, and conduct disorder. The 33 modules enable providers to provide evidence-based techniques to fluidly address the concerns and stressors most likely to be encountered in clinical practice.
Khristine speaks from her own experience and describes what she finds most exciting about MATCH-ADTC:
“MATCH was distilled from different evidence-based treatments to make sure that clinicians are serving our young people appropriately. Sometimes what happens is when clinicians work with young people, they present to the clinic not just with one problem. So they're not presenting with just anxiety. Oftentimes, if not all times, our children are coming in with comorbid conditions or significant psychosocial stressors. And instead of clinicians trying to on the fly figure out what should I do for this condition … and essentially not be providing evidence-based work, in comes MATCH, where you have what's called a “focus interference framework.”
She goes on to describe how MATCH-ADTC was developed based on real world clinical presentations, versus solely in academic or research settings:
“What MATCH strived to do was to treat young people with comorbid conditions in community health centers, community treatment centers, and really gather their information and their data from particular types of kids versus researching in academia, for example, and where we might have someone who presents only with anxiety or presents only with depression. I really appreciate the intentionality behind working with young people and making sure that this is actually going to be something that we can [use to] treat our young people.”
In addition to providing an overview of MATCH-ADTC, Khristine describes how this treatment modality may be particularly helpful for our military children and provides resources for providers who want to pursue training in this approach. Of course, she also shares her “EBP confessional,” reminding us that avoiding discomfort is not a good long-term strategy for providers. Listen to the full discussion here: MATCHING Treatment to Kids' and Teens' Needs.
If you have a question or topic you want to suggest for a future episode, feel free to drop us a voice-mail message at https://www.speakpipe.com/cdpp4p.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Carin Lefkowitz, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and Senior Military Behavioral Health Psychologist at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Lefkowitz earned her M.A. and Psy.D. in clinical psychology at Widener University, with a concentration in cognitive-behavioral therapy.