In addition to sharing valuable insights, Nancy’s conversational tone and ability to show vulnerability in her practice brings her listeners in, creates a space for empathy and learning, and inspires us to connect at a deeper level with more people. And, one hopes, we will all make a bigger impact because of that.
”School Mental Health Course
Dr. Rappaport is available to speak or conduct longer workshops upon request on topics including the following:
- The Behavior Code: Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students
- Resilience: Understanding and Teaching Challenging Children Without Burnout
- Compassion, Burnout, and Empathic Fatigue: Building Resilience in Our Patients and Ourselves
- “Is This Student Safe to Return?” A Comprehensive School Safety Assessment Approach
- After a Suicide: Helping Children Heal
- Teen Depression: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do
- Finding Our Way: Healing Our Traumatized Children
- The Power of Reflection: The Role of Narrative in Medicine
- Advocating for Patients and Educating about Suicide: Drawing from Personal and Clinical Experience
Upcoming Events
Previous Events

Kids Count in Our Community: The Pandemic Hits Home
The events of the past year have had varying effects on the physical, emotional, social, and mental health of all family members and those who interact with them. Too many families are feeling the strain of toxic stress which has compounded their daily struggles.
This program is designed to inform the community-at-large, especially parents, families, caregivers and teachers, about the impact the pandemic has had on all of us.
On April 7th our expert panelists will discuss the ongoing disruptions, stressors, and anxieties that kids, parents, and teachers are experiencing during this pandemic. Each speaker will offer answers to pressing questions, suggest tools and techniques to mitigate dysfunction and teach positive responses to stress in the home and academic settings.
Panelists include: Dr. Nancy Rappaport, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School, speaking on toxic stress; District Attorney Marian Ryan, Middlesex County, reporting on the effects of the pandemic from her justice enforcement perspective and providing support resources; Tammy Bernardi, Prevention Training Specialist at the Children’s Trust, Boston, focusing on child sexual abuse prevention; Koa Goode, LSW Supervisor with Greater Lawrence Community Action Council, addressing effective tools for parenting during stressful times; and Fiona Jensen, Executive Director of Calmer Choice, providing easy meditation tools to promote well-being.

Coping with Covid: Coping with Disappointment and Building Resilience

Taking Care of All of our Children: Addressing Harsh Realities and Cultivating Hope
Presented by:
Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, PhD
Nancy Rappaport, MD
Martha Vibbert, PhD
An interactive panel drawing on the backgrounds and expertise of a clinical psychologist, a pediatric psychologist, and a child psychiatrist, bringing their extensive experience to address the hardships children face while also accentuating practical steps towards building strong partnerships with parents, addressing power differentials, promoting equity, and cultivating empathy.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the complex multifactorial stressors confronting children
- Identify ways to build strength and capacity in systems of care, in order to foster resilience and address power differentials.
- Discuss how to increase empathy in parents, children, and providers.

School Mental Health: Treating Students K-12
Registration now open!
Given the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, schools are forced to adapt the ways in which they meet the educational needs as well as to support the emotional wellbeing of students. The course is designed to provide the learner with the evolving understanding of how to recognize the gaps in learning and design appropriate educational interventions. The emphasis is on practical and timely clinical information and skills based on research, including evidence-based practices, and innovative learning strategies. We will use live streaming, electronic Q & A, and other remote learning technologies.

Keeping Our Schools Safe: What You Should Know About Safety Assessment
Online (Zoom)

Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Safety Assessment Approach

Clinical Consultation Breakfast: Family is the Best Medicine: Strengthening Family Therapy Skills to Support Children in Crisis
Presented by Nancy Rappaport and John Sargent.
As participants discuss the challenges they face when working with families, they gain the ability to address clinical problems as “tasks” for the family to resolve in the clinical setting and develop skills that enable this family-therapist collaboration. There is a focus on encouraging interactions within and with families that promote effective family function, build hope, enhance flexibility, and leverage the family’s capacity to heal. Participants become familiar with common themes for families that are “stuck” and learn both approaches and interventions that enhance closeness, encourage effective limits, and build understanding and support in the family.

Excelsior! Virtual Wisdom for Medical Students and Residents: Advancing Your Career as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
Trainees interact with prominent child and adolescent psychiatrists, Drs. Rebecca Klisz-Hulbert, Nancy Rappaport, and Andres S. Martin, as they share their journeys and career paths to leadership in the field.

Clinical Consultation Breakfast: Engaging Students and Supporting Educators in Schools: Learning through Case Discussion
To best determine appropriate accommodations for dysregulated students, child and adolescent psychiatrists need to be familiar with systemic interventions that schools implement, how those may impact their patients, and how to assess students who have made threats. Participants learn strategies for engaging families in a collaboration with schools to best support their students; and understand how evidence-based, systemic interventions can improve school climate, prevent bullying, assess safety threats, recognize school avoidance, and support students returning to school after hospitalization. Participants are more prepared to assist with systemic interventions, realize the importance of relationship building between students and school adults, and acquire strategies to support collaborative planning.

Personal Experiences of Safety Assessment: Student and Family Voices
Dr. Rappaport will present Personal Experiences of Safety Assessment: Student and Family Voices as part of a Clinical Perspectives presentation: Impulsive Behavior or Legitimate Warning?: Preventing, Assessing, and Responding to Student Threats.

Resilience in an Uncertain Time: Supporting Students and Families During the Pandemic
Registration now open!
During this time of uncertainty and change, adults who work with children and families are rising to the challenge of finding new ways to connect with them, offering practical strategies for coping and thriving, and providing comfort and consistency – all while trying to care for themselves and their own families. Dr. Rappaport will share more practical concepts and tools that educators and social workers can use: maintaining connections, finding contributory activities, communicating in age-appropriate ways, validating questions and worries, balancing structure and rigidity, and supporting those with a history of trauma and challenging home lives. Her suggestions will be based on her many years of clinical experience and experience translating psychiatric concepts into easy actionable steps for educators and families. She will also discuss how taking care of ourselves and building our own resilience allows us to better continue to support children and families and allows us to boost our, and their, capacity to endure and perhaps even thrive.

Dancing with Prolonged Pandemic Anxiety: Strategies for Supporting Students and Families

Webinar series: Beyond the threat: How to tip the balance toward safety in schools while considering the needs and challenges of individual students
October 2 and 16, November 6 and 13, and December 4, 2020
In this 10-hour webinar series, Dr. Nancy Rappaport (and several guest experts) will deepen our understanding of how to respond to students with threatening behavior in substantial ways. She’ll also help us explore the necessary cultural changes we need to make in order to effectively support students and keep our communities safe and connected.
Questions to be considered:
- How do we as educators/clinicians build relationships with dysregulated kids?
- How do we teach schools about the impact of structural racism and implicit bias which impact student achievement?
- How do we support the patterns of kids on the spectrum who are perseverative on violent themes or who express themselves in provocative ways?
- How do we appropriately implement safety assessments and build a culture of safety?

REMOTE WORKSHOP - Dancing with the prolonged pandemic anxiety: How to have the tough talks, support your students and keep your families grounded
Back by popular demand, Dr. Rappaport will build on the strategies and information from her May webinar. She will discuss supporting children with histories of trauma, how we can anchor ourselves in hope, how to answer children’s difficult questions, strategies for children who may withdraw, and how we continue to strengthen our resilience as we prepare ourselves, our students and families for the long haul in unpredictable circumstances and with an uncertain endpoint.

Online Program: Safe Communities: Violence as a Public Health Crisis
1 Wells Ave., Newton MA
We are living through an epidemic of acts of major violence in our community, heightening fear, revulsion, and anger. This is a public health issue, an assault on our communities, rather than many individual acts. We struggle with responses that range from building defenses against these acts and actors to dealing preventively with the conditions and maladaptation that leads to this violence. Our speakers bring much research, experience, and thought to this catastrophe, and will help us to understand and respond.