Helping the doubly vulnerable: A trauma and emotion regulation group for juvenile offenders

This paper explores literature published about juvenile offenders including demographics, offenses and trauma experiences. It explores the high rates of trauma within juvenile facilities and how these rates of trauma impact mental health issues seen in juvenile facilities. It focuses on the mental health of juvenile offenders and the high prevalence of mental illness, specifically Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among juvenile offenders. It provides an overview of evidenced based programs used with juveniles and juvenile offenders including Emotional Intelligence training and the Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET) intervention. The paper provides a detailed program procedure to use with juvenile offender in the juvenile facilities that focuses on emotional education and intelligence, frustration tolerance, coping skill, decision making and consequence, and identify development. The activities in the group design are based on concepts or activities from Emotional Intelligence or Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET) intervention but are not, to the knowledge of the author, copies of activities of either intervention