Living In Families with Emotions (LIFE)

Training members of local communities in Massachusetts to teach resilience-boosting skills to young adolescents

Do you work with middle school-aged youth?

Are you interested in learning how to help them increase their emotional resilience?


You can become certified to run a skill-building program that teach adolescents new strategies for managing stress and difficult emotions.

A team at Massachusetts General Hospital has developed a program called Living In Families with Emotions (LIFE) for adolescents who are enrolled in middle school.

The overall goal of the LIFE program is to give adolescents new ways to manage the ups and downs of their daily lives and protect their mental health.

During 8 meetings, LIFE teaches adolescents how to recognize their feelings and talk about emotions, and healthy ways of responding to difficult experiences and feelings. LIFE uses brief lessons about how emotions work, group discussions, live exercises, and example situations that illustrate the concepts. Through two research studies, the LIFE program has been found to reduce early symptoms of mental health conditions and improve emotion regulation.


  • No clinical experience is needed to become a LIFE facilitator

  • You will be compensated for completing the training and providing feedback

  • The training involves ~ 12 hours of live or video-based instruction and weekly supervision from a member of our team while you facilitate LIFE for the first time

  • You can become a certified LIFE facilitator and receive a certificate

Are you interested in becoming a certified provider of the LIFE intervention?

Please complete this application to let us know:

View our recent info session to learn more about the LIFE training program:

The training program of the LIFE workshop is sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the MGH Center of Excellence for Psychosocial and Systemic Research