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It is surely reassuring to know that children develop as a result of maturation a range of coping skills that enable then to manage their emotions that arise from different adverse circumstances. However, research into individual differences amongst children of the same age reveals a range of differences. Children with lower levels of development of emotional resilience have been found to at greater risk for poor educational achievement than children with higher levels of development (e.g., Bernard, 2004c). Intervention and prevention programs based on principles and practices of REBT that include a range of adaptive emotional regulation strategies hold the promise of influencing the developmental trajectories of “at risk” young people.

From a REBT perspective, “individuals who can accept events and attributes, no matter now negative, will experience natural feelings of disappointment and frustration, but will rarely manifest clinical depression” (DiGiuseppe et al., 2002, p. 224). Given the increasing prevalence of depression in the child and adolescent population, practitioners would be well advised to consider this approach in the prevention and treatment of depression in young clients. Obviously more effort and research is needed to determine particular strategies that work best with this population, but a concerted effort to promote school-based prevention programs that teach the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, combined with a comprehensive intervention approach will hopefully empower young people to deal with this serious mental health problem.

In this chapter, we have described and explained a comprehensive model for diagnosing and psychotherapeutically treating the anxieties, fears, and phobias of youngsters. The model considers those intrapersonal and ecological variables that theory and research have shown to be particularly keen influences on human behavior. We believe this approach to be the most clinically practical and effective schema that we have discovered in our years of study and practice.