Muir Wood Adolescent and Family Services offers parents my 4-Parent education series: Helping Families Understand Substance Use Disorder, Other Mental Health Disorders & Co-Occurring Disorders & Their Impact on Families. The 4-part series is presented as follows:

• Week 1:   Overview of the Brain: How the Brain Wires, Maps & Develops
• Week 2:  Adolescent Substance Use, Other Mental Health & Co-Occurring Disorders: Key Risk Factors &  Treatment Components
• Week 3: The Family Member’s Experience and the Toxic Stress Connection (the toxic stress information presented may apply to your child, as well)
• Week 4: Open Forum – parents ask questions of one another and myself and share their successes and early experiences, as well as what they might include in their and their child’s Home Agreement.

Please know parents may attend any of the programs as often as they’d like while their child is in residence.

Educational Series Resources

Parents are encouraged to download the following PDFs to enhance the information presented in this 4-part series.

• Frederiksen’s 4-PartMWParentSeries_BASIC BRAIN FACTS  (presented in Week 1, referred to in subsequent Weeks 2, 3 & 4)
• v-2.Frederiksen’s 4-PartParentSeries_RESOURCESList (introduced in Week 1, referred to in subsequent Weeks 2, 3 & 4)
• Frederiksen’s 4-PartMWParentSeries_WhatCanDoNow_BuildingFamilyHomeAgreement (presented in Week 3, discussed in the Open Forum, Week 4)

If you have questions about the information I present, please feel free to contact me, Lisa Frederiksen, at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com.

Articles of Possible Interest

Regarding Cell Phones

• (Latest update 5-23-23) I urge you to read this new Advisory to help with conversations around cell phone use during Home Agreement conversations: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Social Media & Youth Mental Health Advisory
• “SOS for Screens – Your Kids’ Brain in the Digital Age

Regarding IEP Programs (using CA information as the example)

• For information about IEPs…. Scroll down in this link https://capta.org/focus-areas/education/special-needs/ to the section, “Understanding the Individual Education Program (IEP)”
• For Help with Finding Reduced Cost IEP Advocates in CA, start here: https://www.dgs.ca.gov/OAH/Case-Types/Special-Education/Resources/Advocate-List
• After you read the intro, scroll down to one of the group lists. The link I’m sharing is for all ages in CA https://www.dgs.ca.gov/OAH/Case-Types/Special-Education/Resources/Advocate-List#ALL%20CAL%20%20PLUS%2018%20PLUS

Regarding Dopamine and Its Connection to Substance Use and Other Mental Disorders

• Check out “Interview with the author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” by Mary Beth Maslowski, Psychiatry Advisor, 2/24/23, who opens her article with this, “From mobile phones to opioids to sex, and even shopping, it seems practically everyone is addicted to something. Dr Anna Lembke’s book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, a New York Times best seller, sheds a unique light on how to deal with addiction.”
• Quoting from Mary Beth Maslowski’s article, “[T]he constant stimulation of our brains with these highly reinforcing drugs and behaviors, from our smartphone first thing in the morning to our Netflix binge at the end of the day, are all things that are, hypothetically, driving our dopamine levels down as a way to compensate for too much stimulation, and leaving us all depressed and anxious as a result. And I think it’s an important contribution because it points to a very different intervention.” quoting Dr Lembke, Medical Director of Stanford Addiction Medicine, Palo Alto, California, program director for the Stanford Addiction Medical Fellowship, and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

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