JCBS Articles Volume 11 - 14 (2019)
 Psychological inflexibility mediates the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and mental health outcomes (Pages 82-89)
 Effects of a brief mindfulness-infused behavioral parent training for mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (Pages 42-51)
 Patterns of relational responding and a healthy self in older adolescents (Pages 74-80)
 Effectiveness of a web-based Acceptance and Commitment Therapy intervention for wellbeing of parents whose children have chronic conditions: A randomized controlled trial (Pages 94-102)
 Randomized controlled trial of a brief acceptance and commitment training for parents of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (Pages 154-159)
 Surfing the Urge: An informal mindfulness practice for the self-management of aggression by adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (Pages 170-177)
 Acceptance and Commitment Training for reducing inflexible behaviors in children with autism (Pages 178-188)

Volume 15 (January 2020)
 A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for children (Pages 225-234)
 Willingness and Action Measure for Adolescents: Psychometric validation in Spanish adolescents (Pages 46-51)
 Mediators of change in online acceptance and commitment therapy for psychological symptoms of parents of children with chronic conditions: An investigation of change processes (Pages 123-130)
 Adolescent correlates of the Generalized Pliance Questionnaire – Children (Pages 131-134)
 Measuring occurrences of self and other discriminations in relation to mental health in adolescent textual responses (Pages 253-263)

Volume 16 (April 2020)
 A quasi-experimental, multicenter study of acceptance and commitment therapy for antisocial youth in residential care. (Pages 119-127)
 Acceptance and commitment therapy as a school-based group intervention for adolescents: An open-label trial (Pages 71-79)
 Retrospective cohort study of a novel acceptance and commitment therapy group intervention for adolescents implemented in integrated primary care (Pages 109-118)
 The efficacy of group-based acceptance and commitment therapy on psychological capital and school engagement: A pilot study among Chinese adolescents (Pages 134-143)

Volume 17 (July 2020)
 Persian adaptation of avoidance and fusion questionnaire for youth (AFQ-Y): A preliminary examination of its psychometric properties (Pages 46-54)
 Effect of acceptance and commitment therapy in improving interpersonal skills in adolescents: A randomized waitlist control trial (Pages 86-94)
 Decreases in psychological inflexibility predict PTSD symptom improvement in inpatient adolescents (Pages 102-108)
 Mediators of the association between COVID-19-related stressors and parents’ psychological flexibility and inflexibility: The roles of perceived sleep quality and energy (Pages 168-176)

Volume 18 (October 2020)
 Psychological flexibility and inflexibility as sources of resiliency and risk during a pandemic: Modeling the cascade of COVID-19 stress on family systems with a contextual behavioral science lens (Pages 16-27)
 Uncovering the links between parenting stress and parenting styles: The role of psychological flexibility within parenting and global psychological flexibility (Pages 59-67)
 Modeling suicide risk among parents during the COVID-19 pandemic: Psychological inflexibility exacerbates the impact of COVID-19 stressors on interpersonal risk factors for suicide (Pages 117-127)
 Effects of acceptance and commitment therapy on process measures of family caregivers: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Pages 201-213)
 Examining the correlates of psychological flexibility in romantic relationship and family dynamics: A meta-analysis (Pages 214-238)
 The moderating role of psychological inflexibility in the relationship between minority stress, substance misuse, and suicidality in LGB+ adolescents (Pages 276-286)

Volume 19 (January 2021)
 Adolescents with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes: Psychological flexibility is associated with the glycemic control, quality of life and depressive symptoms (Pages 50-56)

Volume 20 (April 2021)
 The Youth Compass -the effectiveness of an online acceptance and commitment therapy program to promote adolescent mental health: A randomized controlled trial (Pages 1-12)
 Experiential avoidance and the misinterpretation of intrusions as prospective predictors of postpartum obsessive-compulsive symptoms in first-time parents (Pages 137-143)

Volume 21 (July 2021)
 Resilience mediates the cross-sectional relationship between mindfulness and positive mental health in early adolescence (Pages 171-175)

Volume 22 (October 2021)
 Developmental trajectories of experiential avoidance and depressive symptoms and association to health behaviors among adolescents during brief guided online acceptance and commitment therapy (Pages 24-31)
 

Volume 26 (October 2022)

• The impact of psychological flexibility on family dynamics amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal perspective
• Exploring the interpersonal consequences of adverse childhood experiences in college students
• Using a natural-language implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) to examine verbal relations involved in psychological inflexibility in children
• Exploring the natural language-IRAP as a potential measure of adolescents’ perspective-taking

Volume 25 (July 2022)

• Acceptance and commitment therapy group intervention for adolescents with type 1 diabetes: A randomized controlled trial
• Acceptance and commitment therapy interventions in secondary schools and their impact on students' mental health and well-being: A systematic review
• A pilot randomized controlled trial of culturally-adapted, telehealth group acceptance and commitment therapy for iranian adolescent females reporting symptoms of anxiety

Volume 24 (April 2022)

• Mindfulness, parenting behavior, and children's mental health: An investigation among diverse, low-income mothers of preschool aged children
• The role of psychological inflexibility in adolescent satisfaction with the educational track and school dropout intentions

Volume 23 (January 2022)

• Intensive outpatient acceptance and commitment therapy with exposure and response prevention for adolescents
• Psychological inflexibility as a mediator of the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and dissociation

Mindtrain - An ACT Treatment Manual for Anxious Kids

Mindtrain is an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy treatment manual for therapists working with anxious children aged 7-11 years written by Jodie Wassner and Glenn Fleming. Both Jodie and Glenn are psychologists from Sydney, Australia, with a great passion for ACT and working with children.

In addition to the ten sessions comprising Mindtrain, the program includes a wealth of resources that can be used with or without the structured course. These include mindfulness meditations (audio plus written scripts) designed specifically for children, calming and focussing games to develop the skill of incidental meditation, recommended readings, Values Cards and worksheets for assessing and monitoring the child’s world.
Mindtrain teaches children to accept and tolerate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Therapists are guided to teach about the process of worry rather than getting caught up in reassuring children that their fears are unlikely to happen. By teaching children about the process of worry and using mindfulness to tolerate anxiety, children become better able to handle new worries as they emerge. 

The semi-structured nature of the program allows therapists with varying levels of experience to utilise the manual in its entirety or to select parts as an adjunct to other therapy. The six principles of ACT are weaved through the program in a structured way to assist children (and therapists) in acquiring a consolidated and user-friendly understanding of ACT.

The most popular aspect of Mindtrain has undoubtedly been the train metaphor - here’s a taster:

Picture yourself standing on the platform of a train station. Imagine that some of your thoughts and feelings are attached to a freight train. When your worries are strong, you can hear the rumbling of the train, the noise of the engine, you can definitely tell when they are coming. The train may stop at the station, but you know it will pass on once it has arrived. The train simply stops by to drop off and pick up passengers, and then it continues on down the track. It is up to you if you want to hop on the train, or just let the train pass by. Some trains have many, many carriages and take a long time to go past, while some only have a couple of carriages and whiz past in a second flat. 

When the train is passing us by, it makes a lot of noise and can be scary. 

When the train has passed on by, we hear the noise of the engine disappearing into the distance and we can appreciate the peace and quiet that remains.

Just like a train, thoughts and feelings that are hard to cope with will pass by if we let them. Sometimes when things aren’t going so well in life, or when you are feeling particularly worried or afraid, it can help if you have some things you can say to yourself to help feel better. These can help us choose not to hop on the train, and to let it pass by. Try some of these…..

•  “Let the train pass by the station”
•  “I can deal with this”
•  “I don’t really like this feeling but I know it will pass”
•  “This feels uncomfortable but I can handle it”
•  “This won’t last forever”
•  “I can choose to stay on the platform”

And remember, if you do hop on the train, you can always get off at the next station!

In the spirit of ACT, we are happy to provide a digital copy of Mindtrain, together with the audio files at no cost. Interested practitioners are welcome to contact Jodie Wassner for the appropriate link.

Contact: [email protected]

Jodie Wassner
Educational and Developmental Psychologist
 

Review of The Thriving Adolescent:
By Reyelle MeKeever

ACT for adolescents provides an exciting opportunity to develop processes uniquely relevant for this population. At the ANZ ACBS Chapter Conference in Wellington, New Zealand I was fortunate to attend a workshop presented by Dr Louise Hayes on ‘ACT for Thriving Adolescents’. The workshop presented a new theoretical model specifically for adolescents developed by Louise and Dr Joseph Ciarrochi.

The DNA-V model is premised on considering, ‘How do young people grow flexibly?’. This is different from helping adult clients shift from inflexibility to flexibility. ACT was initially grounded in psychopathology – this new model strives to teach adolescents to grow in their development using a bottom-up approach rather than trying to fit adult models for this population using a top-down approach.

The components of the DNA-V model include the Discoverer, the Noticer and the Advisor with Values being the compass to model the young person across the three roles. In the workshop, Louise explained the model was formed when reviewing the vagal system and research work including that by Stephen Porges. The model covers all components across contextual behaviour science, RFT and social context. Louise’s workshop presented on the evolution science and evidence base for the model very clearly and convincingly.

Values are the bookends of the model. They are the lightly touched upon at the beginning of teaching the DNA-V model and returned to later once deeper work has been undertaken. Values are the basis for selection and retention of behaviour, and form a compass for adolescents to move around the three components: Noticer, Discoverer and Advisor.

The Noticer is the ability to notice the world and those in it. It is present from birth. Babies are mindful ‘noticers’ and experience the world just as it is, without evaluation or judgments (but this can be uncomfortable). Children are mindful until they are taught not to be and become influenced by the impact of their actions on others. Part of the DNA-V model is reconnecting young people back with their Noticer by teaching them to listen to the information in their body and know how to react to that information.

The Discoverer builds on our early knowledge that we can influence, move, manipulate and make things happen – that we have agency in our world. This is an evolutionary skill that current social structures possibly inhibit for adolescents. Usually learnt through safe risk taking and social connection, adolescents have both a skilled and unskilled Discoverer. Our role is to help them build behavioural repertoires by stepping out of the Advisor role into the physical world to discover what we love about it. The Discoverer helps us to experience life in a way that is unseen by our Advisor.

The Advisor is developed as early as we develop language skills to influence the world and speak for ourselves. Slowly we create a world by our thoughts, experiences and memories that is unique to ourselves. The Advisor becomes our ‘best friend’ – a constant companion of how we engage and manipulate the world inside our heads, like how we use our past to predict our future actions and expected outcomes.

The workshop included several practical and physical strategies to introduce the DNA-V model and each of the components. I them very engaging and easily applicable to working individually or in a group with young people. The creativity and playfulness of the exercises would appeal to young people and provide an environment for them to explore both their internal and physical worlds and grow flexibly. I believe that Louise and Joseph have created a rich and workable model for practitioners and I have regularly drawn on the model and its exercises in my clinical work with young people.
 

Lauren Porosoff and Jonathan Weinstein have put together some really cool stuff for working with children and adolescents in the school setting.

You can read about their work and find resources on their website and you can also check them out on Facebook. Thier book, EMPOWER Your Students: Tools to Inspire a Meaningful School Experience came out in August 2017. If you have additional questions about these resources, you can email Lauren ([email protected]) and Jonathan ([email protected]) for more information.

In addition, Duncan Gillard compiled some of these amazing resources into a seven session protocol for anti-bullying in schools. Lauren, Jonathan, and Duncan were happy to share this protocol for your use in schools, and it can be found attached below.

(This webpage was last update in August 2017)

Hello! Thank you for choosing to use our clinical tool,
Extracting the Act!

For anyone familiar with ACT, you may find yourself identifying ACT consistent themes and processes in different modalities. From music, movies, poems, quotes, to books, art, essays, etc., this material is everywhere! This resource is intended for clinicians to use for their own practice when working with clients and in trainings.

This is an evolving project and is not a final product. We did not want to delay sharing with the community any longer! If you have ideas to add this document, please send them to Amy Murrell at [email protected].

If you would like to cite these documents, please use the following citation:

Murrell, A. R., Connally, M. L., Laurenzo, N., Lester, E. G., Zandevakili, A. S., Hulsey, T. C., & Hogan, E. M. (2014, June). Extracting the ACT: Using ACT Themes in the Arts for Clinical work. Workshop at the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science Annual Convention, Minneapolis, MN.

Best,
The North Texas Contextual Psychology Group
 

Talking Mats is an augmentative communication method and associated app for children and young people with communication difficulties: http://www.talkingmats.com