This panel explores resources and interventions for supporting youth experiencing mental health crises or suicidal thoughts. Please join us for a discussion with Dr. Pamela Parkinson, PhD, LCSW, Founder of the Bay Area Family Institute of Training, and Dr. Kevin Crowley, Senior Consultant with Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS Care). The session is geared toward those in roles supporting youth.
Moderated by: Sarah Kim LCSW

Sarah currently serves as a Program Manager for Crisis Support Services, Clinical Department. She is collaboratively designing a new service called Organizing and Responding to Crisis for Alameda youth (ORCA) Program aiming to serve youth 25 years and younger whose lives are impacted by suicide. In addition to her work at CSS, Sarah offers individual and partnered therapy through her private practice, Collaborative Counseling Services. You can read more about her at www.collaborativecounselingservices.com

Pamela Parkinson, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical psychologist and clinical social worker, whose specialty area is working with youth and their families. Dr. Parkinson has spent most of her career working with system involved youth in our Continuum of Care (foster care, juvenile justice, mental health and the kids struggling in our school systems). She has published a book (2023) entitled: Speaking from the Hidden Heart: Helping Families Heal. Pamela is a certified PCOMS evidence-based practice trainer and currently works as a child/family consultant and trainer for community- based organizations in the Bay Area (and beyond). She has worked in level 14 residential, Non Public Schools, hospitals, and a variety of community-based settings including outpatient clinics, schools, diversion, kinship, etc.

In addition to serving as a CAMS-care Senior Consultant, Dr. Kevin Crowley works as a Staff Psychologist and Director of Externship Training at Capital Institute for Cognitive Therapy. He has conducted risk assessments, delivered suicide-specific treatments, and provided suicide-focused consultation and training through the VA Health Care System and outpatient private practices since 2010. He has also been involved in several suicide-focused program evaluations and formal research projects through The Catholic University of America’s Suicide Prevention Laboratory (Washington, DC) and the Rocky Mountain MIRECC for Suicide Prevention (Denver, CO).

Dr. Crowley’s research to date has emphasized brief interventions for reducing shame and suicide risk, understanding suicide “drivers,” and considerations for optimizing the effectiveness of suicide-focused training. He has presented this research and offered clinical workshops at the annual conventions of both the American Association of Suicidology and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.