LochNels Productions, Inc.

LochNels Productions, Inc. is dedicated to developing, promoting and bringing well-researched, scientifically-supported psychotherapeutic interventions, practical workbooks, books, and additional materials to mental health practitioners including psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, school psychologists, teachers, research professionals or others seeking state-of-the-art psychotherapeutic interventions for children and adolescents with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive problems. Furthermore, through LochNels, agencies whose mission is to address the mental health issues of children and adolescents can also arrange for a psychoeducational offerings such as workshops, in-service training, community talks or other educational programs.

Our treatment materials are specially designed for use with children and adolescents and were developed to be engaging, appealing, and developmentally appropriate. The materials guide the implementation of primarily cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies where the goal is to provide opportunities for youth to learn the necessary skills to meet their specific needs. Youth can benefit greatly from having engaging and appealing workbooks, as well as audiovisual aides to guide their experiences in a structured way that is grounded in best practice approaches. Therapists are provided user-friendly manuals that detail the treatment underpinnings of the goals and objectives for each session, as well as practical suggestions as to how best to engage and interact with youth in the skills building strategies.

Our focus to date has been in offering psychotherapeutic treatment manuals and related materials for the treatment of childhood disorders, especially anger/aggression and other acting out behavior problems. Authors of our publications and professional speakers adhere to the scientist-practitioner model and our programs are empirically-supported or evidence-based. That is, the data gathered in research guide the psychotherapeutic strategies that are the base upon which clinical treatment rests. Moreover, in several cases, the complete treatment programs have been implemented and evaluated with demonstrated treatment efficacy. Further research evaluation will inform and enhance the programs—being built upon research, they remain open to changes based on research evidence.

Titles available through LochNels Productions include Coping Power, a school based intervention program designed specifically for youth and late elementary school and early middle school years, and the Keeping Your Cool Workbooks and Therapist Guide for angry youth from 10 to 17 with an accompanying training video for therapists and their clients. Both of these offerings have built in psychotherapeutic activities that are presented in an interesting/engaging fashion, as well as reward systems, and homework assignments.

Coping Power Program Description

The Coping Power program is a preventive intervention delivered to at-risk children in the late elementary school and early middle school years. Developed as a school-based program, Coping Power has also been adapted for delivery in mental health settings. Coping Power is based on an empirical model of risk factors for substance use and delinquency and addresses key factors including: social competence, self-regulation, and positive parental involvement. The program lasts 15 to 18 months in its full form. An abbreviated version encompassing one school year is also available.

The Coping Power Program’s major services involve structured cognitive-behavioral group sessions for the selected children and behavioral parent training groups delivered to their parents or parenting adult at convenient times in locations near their neighborhoods. The Coping Power Child Component consists of 34 group sessions and periodic individual sessions, and has been typically delivered in school-based settings. The Coping Power Parent Component consists of 16 group sessions and periodic home visits and individual contacts. The group intervention sessions for children and parents are augmented with regularly scheduled, brief individual contacts with children and parents, and these individual sessions are designed to promote generalization of skills to the children’s natural environment. Ideally, the program requires 15 to 18 months to implement, although an abbreviated version of the Coping Power Program – 24 child group sessions and 10 parent group sessions to be delivered within one academic year, with booster follow-up the following year – is currently being field-tested.

Keeping Your Cool Workbook Description

The treatment workbook, Keeping Your Cool, integrates five of the most often utilized cognitive-behavioral intervention techniques for use with acting out children and adolescents into a structured, yet flexible, intervention regimen. There is also an accompanying video, “Keeping Your Cool”: The anger management video that can be directly employed in therapy sessions where models educate the client (and parents) about the nature of anger and teach the client the specific anger management skills. Such a prevention program can be utilized as a primary or secondary intervention strategy in groups or individually. In fact, The American Psychological Association Response to Violence in Youth Project indicated that “primary prevention programs that promote social and cognitive skills seem to have the greatest impact on attitudes about violent behavior among children and youth” and “secondary prevention programs that focus on improving individual affective, cognitive, and behavioral skills… offer promise of interrupting the path toward violence for high-risk or predelinquent youth”. The Keeping Your Cool workbooks have integrated a number of these empirically-supported procedures into a psychoeducational workbook format -- verbal self instructions, relaxation training, problem solving, assertion training, and humor. These particular procedures were selected because of their individually demonstrated usefulness and their theoretical consistency within the cognitive-behavior model of anger management.

Children’s Inventory of Anger (ChIA)

Self-report symptom inventories have a long history in the assessment of psychological disorders in both adults and children.  These tools are used to administer, economical, and readily analyzable.  The Children’s Inventory of Anger (ChIA) continues the tradition of self-report measures of anger in children.  It was initially established over 30 years ago with the development of the instrument (their referred to as the CIA) in 1978.  With only 39 items, the ChIA takes about 10-15 minutes to administer and are very easy to read for youngsters with at least a 3rd grade reading ability.  Because the administration, scoring, and interpretation do not require much time, the ChIA should prove useful in situations where a quick, routine assessment of a younger’s anger problems is required.  The ChIA is easily scored in that the AutoScore consists of a sealed “packet” that contains several inner sheets with a detachable cover page that presents directions for the examinee.  Item responses are given on 4-point Likert scale and each numerical choice on the scale associated with the Pictorial representation.  In addition to a total score, the ChIA yields an inconsistent validity index (INC) and four subscale scores covering four different areas might lead to an anger response in youngsters:  frustration, physical aggression, peer relationships, and authority relations.  ChIA results are presented as age-stratified standard scores based on a nationally representative sample of 1604 youngsters,  It is appropriate for children and adolescents ages 6 through 16 (grades 1-11). 

Although the ChIA is not designed to replace clinical diagnosis, it is useful both as a screening tool to identify children for further evaluation and as the source of additional detailed information in the context of a thorough, multi-faceted clinical assessment.  Because it is designed to measure subjective state of anger, the ChIA can be a useful supplement to treatment planning and to evaluating change in the experience of anger over time.  As such, it can be used as part of a routine screening in a number of situations, in schools, classrooms, in-patient and out-patient clinics, residential treatment centers, juvenile detention centers, and private practice offices.