“A child’s mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support.”
– Kate Middleton
Life is an unpredictable journey. An individual’s reaction could be as varied as possible when facing obstacles or hurdles. The difference in response depends on various aspects. The perspective toward life, biases, and contemplations shapes a person’s response. The reaction is not necessarily a conscious choice when dealing with an unexpected situation. Just a bunch of emotions in the moment. And when it comes to kids, no one can predict their response to an unwanted situation.
Have you ever seen a constantly annoyed kid, a child who doesn’t want to play, eat, or sleep and has a persistent bad mood? Maladaptive aggression in children and adolescents is a relatively less discussed topic. 
Maladaptive aggression can happen due to many factors, especially during the early developmental phases of life, but endless sadness or disruptive behavior in children is alarming. Childhood maladaptive aggression can lead to adolescent conduct disorders, followed by anger management issues and other problems in adulthood. To deal with this, in the late 1990s, Alonzo Carlos DeCarlo invented a revolutionary technique named “Rap Therapy.”
DeCarlo is an American psychologist, clinical social worker, professor, public intellectual, Fulbright scholar, and actor. He is known for his innovative coping technique for maladaptive aggressive behavior in urban ethnic minority adolescents in group music psychotherapy. DeCarlo is a pioneer in employing empirically validated rap music psychotherapy methods to treat serious maladaptive aggressive disorders. DeCarlo’s Rap Therapy was adopted cross-culturally by youth and adolescents worldwide, such as in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States.
Touted as a “Philosopher” since his teenage years, DeCarlo was born in April 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. DeCarlo was keenly interested in philosophy, anthropology, mythology, psychology, and various sports as a kid. He acquired his Bachelor of Arts degree and Master of Social Work degree from Wayne State University. Later he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Toledo. During his college days, DeCarlo worked as a psychotherapist. He also actively participated in acting and performing stage plays during his undergraduate and graduate school years.
DeCarlo began his professional career in state and federal law enforcement, where he worked for ten years. He left law enforcement and worked as a psychotherapist while earning two additional graduate degrees as a full-time graduate student. Besides that, DeCarlo is a qualified and diligent professor with over 20 years of experience. He served as a tenured graduate Associate Professor of Psychology at Chicago State University. DeCarlo is also a Visiting Professor Scholar at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and Cape Coast University in Africa, where he conducted doctoral seminars in Psychology, Education, and Psychiatry. He also served at Washington University and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign as a lecturer of graduate courses in social work.
DeCarlo has worked as a mental health and juvenile justice expert and mental health surveyor. He has authored many theoretical and empirical studies regarding his technique to tackle mental health problems in children and youngsters. A few of his publications include “A reason for reasonable doubt in social justice: the weight of poverty, race, and gender in lopsided case clearances outcomes,” “Rap Therapy? An Innovative Approach to Groupwork with Urban Adolescents,” “The Rise and Call of group rap therapy: A critical analysis from its creator,” “A Collaborative Control Governance Model to Address the Politics of Mental Health and Juvenile Justice for Urban Minority Youth,” “Identity matters: A new intervention threshold for social work practitioners working with African American adolescents” and many more.
Firmly interested in human behavior, DeCarlo has made many notable contributions to mental health awareness, particularly in children and adolescents. Besides his innovative work of creating Rap Therapy, he has been part of many organizations, including R.S. Africa Special, to promote the necessity for professional intervention for children with special needs. DeCarlo has also made conceptual contributions towards the behavioral sciences and professional mental health field by formulating new terms such as Traumatic Experiential Acute Response State (TEARS) in children and Milieu Incongruence in adolescents.
In his book, The Culture of Education and Experiential Polemics, DeCarlo devised the new term Opprejudice. This book became a game changer when it came to systematic racial discrimination towards Black Americans. DeCarlo discussed many thought-provoking topics in the book, such as psychiatry, sexual orientation, religion, culture, social justice, neuroscience, identity, psychology, and technology, with profound intellectual and keen insight. In chapter two of the book, DeCarlo summarized over a century of scholarly discourse on Black identity.
To wrap up, Alonzo Carlos DeCarlo is a multifaceted and multitalented intellectual working on children’s and teenagers’ mental health problems. DeCarlo has developed various innovative ideas and terminologies unfamiliar to the world. He facilitated policy and best practice implementation around risk and protective factors for trauma-exposed children while collaborating with university stakeholders and non-profit organizations. Moreover, having experience in academics for over two decades, he has held numerous notable positions, including tenured faculty member, international scholar, division chair, associate provost of academic affairs, vice-chancellor of academic affairs, and director of graduate and professional programs at various universities that vouch for his skills and intelligence. DeCarlo has been a tenured graduate school professor in psychology at Chicago State University and has lectured at Washington University’s Brown School, the University of Illinois Champaign, and Xavier University in Cincinnati.