Individual risk factors
- Antisocial/delinquent beliefs
- Conduct disorders (authority conflict/rebellious/stubborn/disruptive/antisocial)
- Few social ties (involved in social activities, popularity)
- High alcohol/drug use
- Illegal gun ownership/carrying
- Lack of guilt and empathy
- Life stressors
- Low psychosocial maturity (low temperance, responsibility, and perspective)
- Makes excuses for delinquent behavior (neutralization)
- Mental health problems
Anger control training
Anger control training is the affective component of ART. This moves from the teaching of social skills, to losing anti-social skills and replacing them with pro-social skills. The anger control training uses the anger control chain. This is a process taught to the youth to deal with situations that cause them to get angry. Once again, one segment of the anger control chain is taught each week and the both the facilitators and the youth practice the new skills with relevant life activities. The anger control chain is as follows;
- Triggers (external and internal)—The situation that starts the slide into anger and the self talk that perpetuates it
- Cues—physical signs of becoming angry
- Anger reducers—three (deep breathing, counting backwards, and pleasant imagery) to help reduce or take our mind off of the situation
- Reminders—short positive statements that we say to ourselves to further reduce the angry impulses
- Thinking ahead—Identifying the consequences of our behaviors
- Social Skill—Implementing a pro-social skill into the situation
- Evaluation—Looking back over the use of the anger control chain and evaluating how was implemented
Moral reasoning
Moral reasoning is the cognitive component of ART. This component provides adolescents opportunities to take other perspectives other than their own thereby learning to view their world in a more fair and equitable way. Group Facilitators also identify four thinking errors to facilitate perspective taking and remediate moral developmental delay. The thinking errors that are identified are:
Self-centered thinking—”it’s all about me”
Assuming the worst—”it would happen anyways” or “they would do it to me”
Blaming others—”it’s their fault”
Mislabeling / minimizing—”it’s not stealing, I’m only borrowing it…” or “everybody else does it”
