Claritycon: A Summit on Children’s Mental Health
Considering that one in every five kids struggle with a behavioral, emotional, or mental illness (equating to over 130,000 children in Bexar County alone), it is essential that mental health professionals get as much high-level training as possible. And that is exactly why San Antonio-based Clarity Child Guidance Center—the only nonprofit in South Texas providing a continuum of mental health services annually to over 8,000 children ages 3-17 and their families to manage mental health conditions—has sponsored Claritycon to provide professional education and CEUs/CNEs to educators, therapists, nurses, physicians, social workers, childcare workers and community members from the region.
Presentations explored the numerous internal and external factors that impact the emotional, psychological and social well-being of young people, including Adolescent Sexuality in Age of Technology; School Refusal; Juvenile Justice System; Eating Disorders; Domestic Violence; Combat-Related PTSD; School/Community Collaboration; Health Disparities; Human Trafficking; Ethics; Autism & Aggression; Intersectionality of LGBTQ+; Teen Dating Violence; Immigrant Youth; Sports Performance; Trauma-Informed Care; and Psychotropics.
Claritycon included:
• 12 hours of CNE or CEU professional development
• Four keynote presentations and 29 breakout sessions
• Exhibitors from agencies that offer services/programs
• Keynote speaker David Ambroz, Head of External Affairs & Community Engagement at Amazon, shared his personal story of resilience as he navigated a parent with mental illness, homelessness, and the foster care system. Named by President Barack Obama as an “American Champion of Change” and a leading advocate for child welfare, his recent book, A Place Called Home, depicts his life of childhood poverty and homelessness experienced by so many young people who have been systematically overlooked and unprotected.
Clarity CGC: In keeping with its vision to ensure that every child and family that needs its services receives services, Clarity CGC offers a stand-alone mental health hospital on an eight-acre kid-friendly, open campus in the South Texas Medical Center; a 66-bed, four-unit inpatient hospital with a six-bed Crisis Services unit with specialized treatments for children; and the region’s largest concentration of child and adolescent psychiatrists. It treats conditions ranging from depression and anxiety to suicidal ideation, bipolar disorder, and/or schizophrenia. Clarity serves all children in need of care, regardless of their family’s ability to pay.
Editor & Photographer: Leslie Foley
