H382: The Challenges Kids Face, Developmental, Cultural, and Contextual Perspectives on Risk and Resilience

This class will explore the various diagnostic categories that are frequently seen in youth. We will both respect and examine the tension between the utility and limitations of diagnostic categories in thinking about the challenges that youth face. We will work to expand the myopic tendency to label children’s behavior and reduce complex phenomena into something simple and/or pathological. This class will push the participants to think about kids in a complex way by considering the subtle interplay of socio-economic, cultural, familial, and biological factors. A significant conceptual thread throughout the course will be the attention paid to the power of relationships infusing a child’s life, both the productive and destructive potential of relationships will be investigated. This course meets the psychopathology requirement for licensure in Massachusetts as a School Adjustment counselor.