Anger Management Leadership Groups: A Creative Intervention for Increasing Relational and Social Competencies With Aggressive Youth

Abstract

School counselors (SCs) have a wide range of responsibilities in schools, such as administrative, disciplinary, and counseling duties (Dahir & Stone, 2009). Due to the large number of responsibilities, SCs sometime struggle with developing programs to meet relational needs of at-risk students. The purpose of this article was to provide SCs with a creative, hands-on approach to use with youth struggling with anger and relational issues. SCs in four schools collaborated with a mental health counselor to implement a school-based anger management group that focused on creating leadership abilities and improving relational competencies of students. A pretest–posttest design revealed significant changes in participants' anger and leadership ability.

Keywords:

• school counselors
• mental health
• creativity
• anger management
• leadership
• relational and social competencies
• aggression
• groups