Walker psychology interns present at Wellesley’s Tanner Conference

 
Three Walker psychology interns presented at the 2009 Tanner Conference at Wellesley College earlier this month.

Wellesley undergraduate psychology students Katherine E. O’Donnell, Katherine H. Frost, and Rachel P. So shared their experiences working in the Walker summer program in their presentation “Where the Troubled Ones Are: Assisting Traumatized Children”.  Their discussion offered their firsthand insights into the therapeutic strategies developed at Walker for working with children who have suffered from severe abuse and neglect or traumatic events.

Created in 2001, the annual Tanner Conference “provides a venue for students and alumnae to reflect critically upon, analyze and share their off-campus experiences with others”  in the Wellesley community.

Animal-assisted therapy finds a home at Walker

The newest employee at Walker is only four years old, but she is already making important contributions in the lives of some troubled children. Meet Nya. She’s part Labrador retriever, part poodle, and part expressive therapist.

Nya’s owner, Beth Silvestri-O’Neil, has long been one of Walker’s pioneers. She brought expressive therapy to Walker more than three decades ago, when it was still a brand new field and mostly unknown outside academia. Her commitment to helping troubled children find new ways to express themselves and understand their emotional challenges has led to the newest therapeutic program at Walker: animal-assisted therapy.

Offered as part of the expressive arts therapy program, animal-assisted therapy (AAT) allows children to interact with a specially trained pet and share their thoughts and feelings in a safe, nurturing, and fun environment while they develop responsibility and empathy.

Children chosen for the AAT program are typically struggling with the lasting effects of trauma, often the result of abuse or neglect. AAT promotes improved self-regulation and stress management strategies and seeks to decrease aggressive and acting-out behaviors. “Spending time with Nya has given some kids new access to their feelings in ways that are very different from more traditional therapies,” says Beth.

Working with animals for therapeutic benefit is not entirely new at Walker; for the past decade, some Walker students have participated in “Bootstraps”, an off-campus horseback riding program with similar goals. But Nya, who has been certified by the Delta Society for therapeutic work, is the first four-legged member of the Walker Needham campus community since its days as a dairy farm in the early part of the last century.

So far, the initial response has been very encouraging. The AAT program serves five students, but Beth would like to expand the program to serve more children–an idea that is just fine with Nya. “The kids love her,” adds Beth. “And the feeling is mutual.”

(republished from the October 2008 printed issue of Walker Talk)

A compass for navigating children’s mental health services

Walker medical director Dr. Christopher Bellonci was recently quoted in the New York Times opinion pages blog “Domestic Disturbances”  by author Judith Warner. The post, “Children in the Mental Health Void” describes the recent crisis in Nebraska that resulted in parents of severely troubled children abandoning them under the state’s “Safe Haven” law.

Warner’s conclusion, which will come as no surprise to many in the Walker community, is “this problem of lack of access to care—and lack of access to truly good care—is the real mental health ‘epidemic’ affecting children in our time.”

Dr. Bellonci mentions the desperate measures taken by some familes—sometimes even the surrendering of parental custody—to find help for their children. Describing their search for services that often do not exist as a “navigation to nowhere,” Warner notes that “it’s really in our interest to provide them with a compass. “

Another example of Walker’s “spread of effect”, we are proud to acknowledge Dr. Bellonci’s leadership role in advocacy on behalf of children and families facing serious challenges.  You can read the whole article here.