Receiving special attention are the structure, dynamics, and unique problems of families that do not fit the traditional mold. Experts in these areas share their findings and provide clinical guidelines for treating bi-nuclear, single-parent, gay and lesbian, and other nontraditional families.

National expert Dr. Joseph Lee explains the nature of youth addiction and treatment, and how families can create a safe and supportive environment for their loved ones during treatment and throughout their recovery. Raising a child is tough as it is, but when your kid becomes addicted to alcohol or other drugs, it can feel as if you’re living a nightmare. You’re not alone. In Recovering My Kid, Dr. Joseph Lee, a leading youth addiction specialist, takes worried, confused, and angry parents by the hand and addresses their most pressing questions and fears: What is addiction? What happens when my child returns home from treatment? How can my family support his or her recovery? What if my child relapses? How can my family get well again?Getting your child and your family well again requires the support and understanding of the whole family, even if feelings and trust were damaged. In his engaging and straightforward style, Lee explains the difficult concepts of addiction, treatment, and recovery in a way parents and families can understand and gives them concrete strategies they can put into practice.This book will help family members begin to understand what their loved one is going through and how they can help the addict adjust to a clean-and-sober life while still taking care of themselves.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Funders of mental health services to youth and families have increasingly required providers to use treatments deemed to be "evidence-based." There are several evidence-based family treatment (EBFT) approaches found to be effective with the same types of presenting problems and populations. All of these EBFTs claim to be based on similar theoretical approaches and have specified treatment protocols that providers must follow to be faithful to the model. These EBFTs are expensive for agencies to establish and maintain. Many agencies that initially adopted one of these EBFTs later de-adopted it because they could not sustain it when billing Medicaid is the only way to pay for such services. Meta-analyses of treatment outcome studies have found that various theoretical approaches to therapy are effective, but no one approach is more effective than any other. What accounts for client improvement is not the specific treatment approach, but rather the factors they all have in common. To provide an effective, affordable, and flexible approach to family treatment the authors of this book developed and have conducted researched on an approach they call Integrative Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST). I-FAST is a meta-model organized around the common factors to family treatment. Such a model does not require practitioners to learn a completely new way to provide treatment but rather it builds on and incorporates the clinical strengths and skills they already possess. This book is a manual for how to faithfully and flexibly provide I-FAST. A manual for a meta-model to treatment based on the common factors has never been provided. This book provides clear guidelines illustrated by cases examples for not only how to provide I-FAST but also how to teach and supervise it as well as how to integrate I-FAST with the rest of an agency's services and programs.

Despite the widespread and serious nature of trauma as a serious health issue, many who suffer from trauma avoid seeking services while many drop out of services prior to completion. Additionally, family as a potential source of healing from trauma is a seriously neglected topic in the field. This book offers a flexible family treatment approach that can adapt to issues trauma survivors are willing to work on.

Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT)-Multidimensional family therapy is the multisystemic family-focused treatment described in this manual for experienced family therapists that includes 12 weeks of in-clinic and telephone sessions working with individual adolescents and their families. MDFT targets the psychosocial functioning of individual family members, the family members' relationships, and influential social systems outside the family.