Helping Kids in Crisis: Managing Psychiatric Emergencies in Children and Adolescents provides expert guidance to practitioners responding to high-stakes situations, such as children considering or attempting suicide, cutting or injuring themselves purposely, and becoming aggressive or violently destructive. Children experiencing behavioral crises frequently reach critical states in venues that were not designed to respond to or support them -- in school, for example, or at home among their highly stressed and confused families. Professionals who provide services to these children must be able to quickly determine threats to safety and initiate interventions to deescalate behaviors, often with limited resources. The editors and authors have extensive experience at one of the busiest and best regional referral centers for children with psychiatric emergencies, and have deftly translated their expertise into this symptom-based guide to help non-psychiatric clinicians more effectively and compassionately care for this challenging population. The book is designed for ease of use and its structure and features are helpful and supportive: The book is written for practitioners in hospital or community-based settings, including physicians in training, pediatricians who work in office-based or emergency settings, psychologists, social workers, school psychologists, guidance counselors, and school nurses -- professionals for whom child psychiatric resources are few. Clear risk and diagnostic assessment tools allow clinicians working in settings without access to child mental health professionals to think like trained emergency room child psychiatrists--from evaluation to treatment. The content is symptom-focused, enabling readers to swiftly identify the appropriate chapter, with decision trees and easy-to-read tables to use for quick de-escalation and risk assessment. A guide to navigating the educational system, child welfare system, and other systems of care helps clinicians to identify and overcome systems-level barriers to obtain necessary treatment for their patients. Finally, the book provides an extensive review of successful models of emergency psychiatric care from across the country to assist clinicians and hospital administrators in program design. An abundance of case examples of common emergency symptoms or behaviors provides professionals with critical, concrete tools for diagnostic evaluation, risk assessment, decision making, de-escalation, and safety planning. Helping Kids in Crisis: Managing Psychiatric Emergencies in Children and Adolescents is a vital resource for clinicians facing high-risk challenges on the front lines to help them intervene effectively, relieve suffering, and keep their young patients safe.

Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction * Winner of the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice Based on the acclaimed series—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—an intimate account of the devastating effects of gun violence on our nation’s children, and a call to action for a new way forward In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection—both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique. In the past decade, 15,000 children have been killed from gunfire, though that number does not account for the kids who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims but have nevertheless been irreparably harmed by gun violence. In Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms as well as efforts to manage children’s trauma in the wake of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres, from Columbine to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Through deep reporting, Cox addresses how we can effect change now, and help children like Ava and Tyshaun. He explores their stories and more, including a couple in South Carolina whose eleven-year-old son shot himself, a Republican politician fighting for gun safety laws, and the charlatans infiltrating the school safety business. In a moment when the country is desperate to better understand and address gun violence, Children Under Fire offers a way to do just that, weaving wrenching personal stories into a critical call for the United States to embrace practical reforms that would save thousands of young lives. *A Newsweek Favorite Book of 2021 *An NPR 2021 "Books We Love" selection *A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction *A Kirkus "2021's Best, Most Urgent Books of Current Affairs" selection

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