More than just anxiety treatment - Aarhus BSS centre expanding treatment options for children
The Anxiety Disorder Clinic for Children and Adolescents is changing its name to the Centre for the Psychological Treatment of Children and Adolescents. With the new name come expanded treatment options for children with psychological disorders. Among other things, children with worrying levels of school absenteeism can get help at the centre.
“We’re changing our name because our activities no longer focus only on anxiety and anxiety treatment. Previously we worked primarily with children with anxiety disorders. Now our treatment options also cover other psychological disorders in children and adolescents. As an example, our Back2School project, which is aimed at children and adolescents with worrying levels of school absenteeism, is now up and running. Here the underlying causes may be something other than anxiety,” says Centre Director Mikael Thastum.
In addition to treating children with psychological problems as well as training psychology students and clinical psychologists, one of the centre’s primary tasks is conducting research into evidence-based treatment methods.
As such, the Centre for the Psychological Treatment of Children and Adolescents is a more appropriate name for the activities taking place at the centre. With the new name, the centre director wants to signal that the centre is a research institution with research-based treatment methods, and that the centre offers more than just clinical treatment.
The knowledge and methods developed at the centre are communicated to other clinical practices. This improves the ability of those practices to diagnose and treat children.
“We want to be a knowledge centre for others who work on treating children with psychological disorders. We want to share our knowledge about diagnosing children - in other words, which problems children have, how to spot the problems, and how clinicians can become better at identifying children’s problems,” says Mikael Thastum.
Parents who have children with psychological problems can read more about the treatment options on the centre’s new website. The website also provides detailed information for professional practitioners and an opportunity to study the centre’s research in depth.
Further information:
Mikael Thastum
Centre director, professor in psychology at Aarhus BSS
Email: mikael@psy.au.dk
Tel: +4587165846 / +4540238559