Public and Inaugural Lecture by Professor Stephen Briggs - Director, Centre for Social Work Research, Tavistock Clinic
Author of Working with Adolescents and Young Adults; A contemporary psychodynamic approach (Palgrave)
Are adolescents getting worse? Are they more disturbed and more likely to experience mental health problems than previously? Much of the recent evidence cited in policy documents and the media suggests this is the case, witness the reported high rates of problem behaviours; violence, substance misuse, self-harm and suicidal behaviour, eating disorders, and so on.
This provokes two questions: how do we understand the reasons for the malaise in adolescent mental health and how should we try to address the problems?
In this lecture, drawing on my experiences of researching and working therapeutically with young people, I make a contribution to the current debates surrounding both these questions. By focussing on different patterns of relationships between young people and adults (in various roles: parents, carers, teachers, therapists) and social institutions (education, employment) I recast adolescent difficulties - and their aspirations and strivings - in relation to the adult world. From this perspective, connecting adolescent emotionality to the social and relational processes in which they are engaged helps understand adolescent mental health difficulties.
I show how this approach should underpin a coherent way of organising effective responses, with implications for young people, parents, carers and organisations.
Stephen Briggs is Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Work Research in UEL's School of Social Sciences Media and Cultural Studies (SSMCS) and Vice Dean and Consultant Social Worker in the Tavistock Clinic’s Adolescent Department.
After a childhood and adolescence in Derbyshire, he studied history and then trained and worked as a social worker. He has been at the Tavistock since 1991, and UEL since 1994, treating troubled young people, teaching on professional postgraduate training courses and researching aspects of infancy, adolescence, mental health and suicidality.
Stephen Briggs has written widely, including Growth and Risk in Infancy (Jessica Kingsley 1997), ‘Working with Adolescents; a contemporary psychodynamic approach’ (2nd Edition, Palgrave 2008) and (coedited with Alessandra Lemma and William Crouch), Relating to self-harm and Suicide: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on practice, theory and prevention (Routledge 2007)
For further details and to confirm your attendance, contact our Events Team on 020 8223 2884 or events@uel.ac.uk
For travel information to our Docklands campus see: www.uel.ac.uk/about_uel/why_uel/docklands.htm
© 2006
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