Behavioral Health Threat Assessment & Management Workshop

How can behavioral health providers best partner with schools in assessing, intervening, and treating those at risk for engaging in violent behavior?

For decades, the professional threat assessment community has engaged and researched the psychology of violence: the functions of violence, the pathway to intended violence, and proximal risk dynamics of violence. This workshop will unpack the best practices in threat assessment and management based on this research, will illustrate these best practices at work in real-world cases, and will apply these best practices to behavioral health crisis assessment, intervention, and treatment. With a particular focus on the Ohio model of school threat assessment and management, this workshop will equip behavioral health providers to best partner with schools in preventing and intervening in behavioral threat situations.

Topics

The topics taught through didactic training, case studies, and interactive skill building in this workshop include:

· The three primary functions of violence and how each can present in behavioral health crises.

· The pathway to intended violence model and its application in behavioral health crisis assessments.

· The seven empirically validated proximal risk dynamics of violence.

· The psychology of murder-suicide, and how it informs assessment.

· Evidenced-based Structured Professional Judgment tools used in threat assessment, including the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (C-STAG) model.

· The legal considerations and behavioral health interventions regarding violence (Tarasoff, Emergency Detentions).

· The Ohio School Safety Center approach to threat assessment and management in schools.

· Different models and strategies of law enforcement partnership in violence prevention.

· How the three primary functions of violence can each be effectively engaged, managed, and treated through behavioral health crisis care.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

· Identify the three primary functions of violence, how each can present itself in behavioral health care, and how each can be effectively engaged and treated in behavioral health care.

· Apply the Pathway to Intended Violence model to current behavioral health crisis assessments.

· Utilize Structured Professional Judgement tools (SPJ’s) and the proximal risk factors of violence to assess risk of violent behavior.

· Engage in effective strategies for behavioral health threat management.