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Wednesday seminar covers teen violence By KELLY STEWART A conference on understanding teen violence will be held Wednesday in Medford. "Teen Violence: How to Identify and Help High Risk Kids" is sponsored by Southern Oregon Adolescent Study and Treatment Center and Asante Health System. The conference is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. in the Smullin Health Education Center on the Rogue Valley Medical Center campus. David A. Verhaaghen will be the featured speaker. Verhaaghen has served as clinical director of three children's mental health agencies, including the largest of its kind in North Carolina. He earned his doctorate at the University of North Carolina. Verhaaghen will speak about current trends among adolescents, including an increase in Internet use. Now, 47 percent of adolescents regularly surf the Net, he said. By 2002, that number is expected to grow to 65 percent. Verhaaghen also will cover the limitations of "profiling" approaches to threat assessment and methods for completing a good threat assessment. "I'm going to challenge the idea of a certain profile of a (violent) kid," Verhaaghen said. Singling out suburban male teens who listen to certain music groups and labeling them "potentially violent" is not useful; those characteristics apply to millions of teens, he said. Instead, Verhaaghen suggests a threat assessment based on research models, the child's history of violence and the context of the violence. If this model would have been used at the recent Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, the violent teens "would have been scooped up a lot earlier," he said. Verhaaghen will speak about good treatment approaches for high-risk adolescents. Increasing the number of positive relationships in a teenager's life cuts down on that child's risk for violence, he said. The program will be of value to clinicians, social workers, educators and other professions working with children, adolescents and families, organizers said. The registration fee is $75, and continuing education credits are available through the National Bar of Certified Counselors. For more information or to register, call SOASTC at (541) 476-3302. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA