ADHD: Treatment and Symptom Management
The treatment plan is sound and the client stops coming. They miss one appointment, feel bad about it, miss the next one, and by the third they have quietly decided therapy is one more thing they are failing at. With ADHD that is the most common way treatment ends, and it is the part most training skips over on the way to the techniques.
Leo DeBroeck puts that conversation in the first few sessions, before the work starts, and frames it around when a client misses an appointment rather than if. He also sets out six treatment steps in a fixed order and argues the order matters more than which modality you favour. Treating the anxiety or the low mood first, while untreated ADHD is driving both, is where clinicians lose months.
Two hours, moving quickly, and it assumes you already know what ADHD is. He works through psychoeducation that undoes what clients have picked up online, behaviour charts for adults as well as children, what the evidence actually says about medication and how to talk to a hesitant parent about it, co-occurring symptoms, and accommodations at school and at work.
You’ll walk away with
- A way to run the adherence conversation early, framed around what happens when an appointment is missed rather than a promise that it will not be
- The six treatment steps in sequence, and the reasoning for why treating co-occurring anxiety or depression first tends to waste months
- A method for checking whether your treatment is working rather than assuming, and what to do when the measures say it is not
- The differential thinking that stops trauma, sleep problems and depression being treated as ADHD
- Language for the heritability conversation that leaves a client with relief rather than a life sentence
- Behaviour charts that work for adults as well as children, built around environment, thought, feeling, behaviour and whether the behaviour actually worked
- The benefit analysis step that decides whether a client uses the chart on their worst day or abandons it
- A read on symptom swapping, and why a replacement behaviour has to be genuinely incompatible with the one it replaces
- A grounded account of what ADHD medication does and does not do, including what to say to a parent whose picture of it comes from the 1990s
- The “good enough” conversation, for the point where further improvement costs more effort than the client wants to spend
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CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This course is included with your Tatra Training membership, along with every other course in the library.
Course Duration: 2 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records. Your certificates are yours to keep.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Revisit Anytime: Come back to the course as often as you like while your membership is active, whenever you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Children and adolescents experiencing suicidal ideation, complex trauma, and severe behavioral challenges - and the practitioners who work with them - can need more than generic therapeutic approaches to navigate these high-risk situations successfully. Leo DeBroeck has dedicated his career to developing practical, evidence-based interventions for the most vulnerable young people, becoming an internationally recognised expert who has worked across every level of care from intensive inpatient settings to school-based services.
As President and Founder of Counselor's Choice Award LLC and Licensed Mental Health Counselor with Child Mental Health Specialist credentials, DeBroeck brings unique expertise that bridges clinical practice with professional education and product development. His MS in Clinical Psychology with thesis research on suicide factors, combined with his CBT Plus certification from the University of Washington and Harborview Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress Center, demonstrates his commitment to understanding the complex factors that put young people at risk. His published children's therapy books and scientific research on suicidality in young adults reflect his ability to create practical resources that help both clinicians and families navigate difficult conversations about mental health.
DeBroeck's expertise spans child and adolescent mental health, suicide prevention and assessment, trauma therapy, ADHD treatment, codependency, abusive relationships, grief counseling, and addiction counseling. His approach recognises that effective work with high-risk youth requires understanding family systems, school environments, and community resources while maintaining safety as the primary concern. He specialises in cases requiring intensive intervention, situations where standard outpatient therapy hasn't been sufficient, and training practitioners to work confidently with suicidal and severely traumatised children and adolescents.
What sets his training apart is real-world crisis experience combined with practical resource development. DeBroeck doesn't just teach theory - he shows practitioners exactly what to do and say in high-risk situations, drawing from years of intensive inpatient work and wraparound services. His development of therapeutic tools and children's therapy books demonstrates his understanding that effective intervention often requires creative, engaging approaches that meet young clients where they are.
For your practice, expect to gain specific suicide assessment techniques, tools for engaging resistant adolescents, and frameworks for coordinating care across multiple levels of intervention. His approach particularly benefits clinicians working with high-risk youth, those needing confidence in crisis situations, or practitioners wanting to develop expertise in intensive mental health services.
Quick Win: DeBroeck's "safety scaling" technique helps practitioners quickly assess suicide risk while building therapeutic rapport with adolescents - which helps create a foundation for honest communication about difficult topics while maintaining appropriate clinical vigilance.
Qualifications
- MS, Clinical Psychology (thesis: factors in suicide)
- Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Washington State
- Child Mental Health Specialist (CMHS), Washington State
- Mental Health Professional (MHP)
- CBT Plus Certified, University of Washington and Harborview Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress Center
Leadership & Business
- President & Founder, Counselor's Choice Award LLC, Washington State, current
- Continuing Education Course Provider, USA, Australia, Canada, UK, current
- Product reviewer for counseling and therapeutic tools
- International trainer and course developer
Professional Experience
- Mental Health Therapist, Community health center, Washington State (full-time with Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists team)
- Therapist, Intensive inpatient program, Spokane, Washington (children and adolescents focus, several years)
- Experience across multiple levels of care: long-term inpatient care, WISe wraparound intensive services, school-based therapy services, outpatient clinical settings
Clinical Specialties
- Child and adolescent mental health across all levels of care
- Suicide prevention, assessment, and intervention
- Complex trauma therapy for children and adolescents
- ADHD treatment and symptom management
- Codependency and relationship abuse recovery
- Grief counseling and loss processing
- Addiction counseling for adolescents and families
- Neglect and abuse recovery interventions
- Self-confidence building and resilience development
Ready to work confidently with high-risk children and adolescents while developing the crisis intervention skills essential for intensive mental health practice? Discover how Leo DeBroeck's evidence-based, practical methods can help you provide effective care across all levels of treatment intensity while maintaining safety and building genuine therapeutic relationships.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 2
- Topics 0
- Duration 2 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English