Psychological Service Unit
The Psychological Service Unit (PSU) was incepted in 2013 to help clients with psychological health problems and behavioural problems to manage life stressors. The unit uses a holistic approach to empower individuals to help address immediate concerns, build strengths and prepare them to overcome future challenges.
A wide range of diagnostic and psychometric assessments are offered to both children and adults. These services include:
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Specific Learning Disabilities e.g. Dyslexia
- Intellectual disabilities
Individual Therapy Services
- Mood disorders
- Psychological trauma/psychological traumatic stress
- Stress-related issues
- Anger and aggression issues
- Poor social skills
- Behavioural problems
- Low self-esteem and confidence
- Deliberate self-harm
Group Therapy Services
CHAMP (Children Holistic Anger Management Programme) is a therapeutic group work that aims to address children’s aggressive behaviour by helping them to gain a better understanding of their aggression and their motivation to aggress. Depending on the client’s setting, this programme could be used as a preventive approach or as part of an intervention approach. This programme uses two main modality – cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Hence, a significant portion of the programme focuses on teaching children to identify and challenge their unhelpful thoughts and distorted perception of an event.
Meanwhile, mindfulness helps children become more aware of their warning signs and to be comfortable with their angry thoughts. Therefore, children learn how to work towards leading a fulfilling life without aggression through:
- Development of a greater awareness regarding the triggers of reactive aggression;
- Understanding the consequence of aggression on self and others;
- Learning how to problem solve;
- Learning how to use assertive skills to communicate effectively.
Little Brave Hearts
Although stress is part and parcel of life, and at times, can benefit children in leading productive lives, an overwhelming amount of stress will eventually increase the risk of a child developing a wide range of internalising and externalising problems. For children being exposed to a multi-stress family, it is therefore especially important to build up their resilience to enable them to experience a healthy development and positive growth despite the harsh conditions.
The Little Brave Hearts is a therapeutic group intervention for children and involves the participation of their parents in a concurrent parenting programme. The Little Brave Hearts programme is conceptualised based on Flach’s (1988) and Kumpfer’s (1999) resilience framework, with the key focus being on the internal factors that can be developed by an individual. Along with these framework, the programme adapted components of Penn Resiliency programme, which focuses on the development of resilient thinking to inoculate children against self-defeating beliefs.
The therapeutic group programme aims to impart cognitive-behavioural, emotional regulation and problem-solving skills and enhances the children’s sense of self-efficacy and ability to seek support from positive role models.
Stand Up Voice Out (SUVO)
School bullying is a worldwide phenomenon that has been receiving increasing attention over the years. This is worrisome as victims of bullying are frequently found to have intense emotions and an increased risk of developing internalising problems, low self-esteem and relationship issues.
Stand Up Voice Out (SUVO) aims to address intense bullying victimisation by equipping participants with knowledge about bullying and building emotional regulation. Additionally, children are taught assertive communication skills and role plays are used to increase their sense of mastery. By the end of the programme, children would have learned how to cope with distress and be equipped to stop bullying behaviour.
SUVO is a therapeutic group work that was conceptualised and conducted through a collaboration between PSU and BASIC Student Care Services.
During childhood and adolescence, friendship holds great importance to an individual; hence friendship is important for an individual’s healthy development. An essential aspect in the development and maintenance of friendship is effective conflict management, especially as interpersonal conflicts are part and parcel of everyone’s lives. Beyond its function in cultivating healthy friendships, constructive resolution of disagreement is found to be important for healthy development of an individual’s social, cognitive and psychological processes.
Conflict Management group work aims to equip participants with effective conflict resolution skills through means such as exploring calming strategies, empathy building and assertiveness training. The cognitive behavioural framework was used in the design of the whole program and the focus on assertive communication was based on Thomas Gordon’s (1970) I-message format.
Conflict Management is a therapeutic group work that was conceptualised and conducted through a collaboration between PSU and BASIC Student Care Services.