Peter Janjušević, Ph.D.
Biography
Peter Janjušević, Ph.D.
The Counselling Centre for Children, Adolescents and Parents Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Peter Janjušević holds PhD in psychology and works as a clinical psychologist at The Counselling Centre for Children, Parents and Adolescents Ljubljana. Most of his work is assessment, counselling and therapy with children and adolescents affected by different problems and disorders in their psychosocial functioning, among which, many have behavioural disorders. Besides clinical work, he is a lead of development and research institute at the Counselling centre Ljubljana, where together with colleagues from Counselling centre and other institutions he conducts research in the fields of emotional and behavioural disorders, system of mental health provision for children and adolescents in school settings and is coordinating projects in the area of youth mental health. He is a teacher and supervisor of cognitive-behavioural therapy and mentor to residents in clinical psychology. He also acts as a vice-president of Section for child and adolescent clinical psychology at the Chamber of clinical psychology of Slovenia. His doctoral dissertation titled »Violence risk-assessment of adolescents with conduct disorders« has been awarded by Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana with recognition as the best doctoral dissertation in the field of social sciences in the study year 2016/2017.
LECTURE
Social-cognitive factor in aggressive behaviour of adolescents
Why some adolescents more often react to provocation with aggression, while other don’t? In which aspects of their cognitive processing do they differ? Why some adolescents, if they only can, avoid physical confrontation, while it seems that others just wait for a chance to show their physical power?
The lecture will focus on aggressive and violent behaviour from social and cognitive perspective. Perceptions and cognitions – interpretations and deficits in self-regulation of emotions and behaviour as key factors in aggressive responding will be presented. Lecture will cover the following themes: processing of social information, deficits and distortions in process in content of perceptions, interpretations, reactions and self-control. While social-cognitive models of anger and aggression have a long tradition, they are still evolving and upgrading with new academic and clinical research. Along with synthesis of established models with current research, the main points of study, which has been conducted by the author with adolescents in Slovenia, will be presented. Implications of the models for practice of psychologists and practitioners from related disciplines with adolescents who exhibit aggressive or violent behaviour will be proposed.