This 6-hour on-demand webinar was originally broadcast live in November 2025.
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Understanding Adolescent Depression in Clinical Practice in a Digitally Saturated World
Adolescent depression is on the rise, and digital media is both a contributing factor and a potential treatment tool.
In many countries around the world, rates of adolescent depression have been rising for years—worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. While part of this increase reflects improved screening, concern about youth mental health is warranted. Pediatric crises related to suicidality and self-injury are increasing alongside depression diagnoses.
Treating adolescent depression has become more complicated. The internet introduces new risks for teens, such as cyberbullying and exposure to content about suicide or self-injury. Smartphone dependency can interfere with healthy habits like sleep and exercise—key elements that support mental health. Additionally, sensationalized content online often spreads biased or false information about psychiatric illness.
Digital media is so pervasive that it can influence nearly every stage of a depressive episode. Clinicians must now support adolescent clients while also helping them navigate these online risks. A grounded understanding of adolescent depression in clinical practice is essential.
A Framework for Treating Adolescent Depression in Clinical Practice
Led by Meredith Gansner, MD—a child and adolescent psychiatrist renowned for her work on digital media and youth mental health—this course offers practical, evidence-informed guidance designed for real-world use. It provides a refresher on diagnosing adolescent depression, reviewing treatment options, and managing safety. It is adapted for today’s digitally saturated world. Relevant insights about teen media use are woven throughout to help clinicians understand how digital habits shape depressive symptoms. This practical approach helps professionals better apply what they learn to adolescent depression in clinical practice.
Participants will explore:
- Current evidence-based practices, from diagnosis through recovery
- Popular but less evidence-supported treatments teens may find online
- Ways to critically evaluate digital tools and mobile mental health apps
- How to discuss online information that clients or parents bring to sessions
Attendees will also gain tools to assess the quality of digital mental health resources. They’ll learn standardized questions to evaluate technology-based treatments, including smartphone apps.
Treatment Tools for Safety, Engagement, and Long-Term Recovery
This course also equips clinicians to support families in designing behavior and safety plans. These include strategies for managing high-risk or maladaptive behaviors tied to digital media. Attendees will learn how to create digital media plans, reduce device dependence, and promote online safety. They’ll also receive key tips that every parent of a teen with depression should know.
Clinicians will leave the training more confident in managing adolescent depression in clinical practice. They’ll gain practical tools that reflect the digital realities of modern adolescent life.
You’ll also leave with tools to support safety planning and crisis prevention—especially when risky online behaviors are involved.
Evidence-Based, Clinically Relevant, and Culturally Informed
This webinar goes beyond theory. You’ll explore not only what research says about adolescent depression in clinical practice but also how to implement it—particularly in settings where teens may already be turning to TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit for answers.
Dr. Gansner brings deep clinical experience and a thoughtful, accessible teaching style. Her work has been featured in academic publications, media interviews, and continuing education programs across North America. She specializes in helping therapists bridge the gap between traditional mental health care and the digital realities of today’s adolescents.
Whether you’re a therapist, psychologist, counselor, or social worker, this training will leave you more confident and prepared to support adolescent clients—and their families—with compassion, clarity, and clinical skill.
- Review international statistics on prevalence of adolescent depression and incidence rates of teen suicide.
- Review signs and symptoms of adolescent depression, obstacles to recognizing the diagnosis, and strategies for confronting parental or adolescent resistance in accepting the diagnosis.
- Review risk factors for adolescent depression, including what research suggests about the influence of screens and social media on the development of a depressive episode.
- Review major categories of lifestyle changes that have been studied in the treatment of adolescent depression and barriers to implementing them.
- Review the role of psychotherapy in the treatment of adolescent depression, including how technology can both help and hinder the therapeutic process.
- Review psychopharmacologic treatment recommendations for adolescent depression, novel treatment interventions being trialed in pediatric populations, and what patients and families are learning about these treatments online.
- Understand safety risks prevalent among teenagers with depression, and how these risks manifest in a digital environment.
- Learn how to create behavior and safety plans to manage dangerous and maladaptive, as well as when inpatient psychiatric hospitalization may be indicated.
- Review the process of recovery from a depressive episode, including strategies to support both adolescent patients and their caregivers.
This training offers 6 hours of direct contact (not counting breaks or lunch). It is the participant’s responsibility to check with their individual state boards/regulatory body to verify CE requirements for their license to practice.
Attendees of the original live broadcast receive instructions on how to obtain their Certificate of Participation at the end of the course and in the “recording ready” email, which is sent 1-2 days after the live course has ended.
Attendees watching the previously recorded/on-demand version must complete a Post-Webinar Quiz with a passing grade of at least 80% to verify their attendance and receive their Certificate of Participation.
Note: The course recording is available only after the live broadcast has ended.
The Certificate of Participation includes:
- Name of participant.
- Title of training.
- Name of presenter plus their credentials.
- Number of hours of training.
- Date of training.
- Confirmation of 100% attendance at the original live broadcast OR a passing grade of at least 80% on the recorded on-demand version post-course quiz.
Get details about CE credits for Canadian and non-US international participants.
Get details about CE credits for US participants.
Please check with your regulatory body/organization to ensure that this certificate is sufficient proof for you to claim CE credits.
Meredith was wonderful! It is not often that you sit alongside a highly trained professional, such as a paediatric psychiatrist, and receive such a warm, welcoming, completely approachable energy. She was fulsomely engaging and engaged with the participants during moments of quality conversation. It was a bonus to have had such a small group as she were able to become acquainted with one another and establish an easy feeling across the two days. I learned a lot and felt that what was presented was timely, relevant, and easily applicable in case work.
H.C.
Counsellor
