Many families turn to mental health professionals for advice and counseling on how to cope with the stresses of legal crises. The first and only book of its kind, this handbook provides mental health professionals with comprehensive coverage of the interface between the legal and family systems. Organized by developmental stages, the book covers a wide range of topics including pre-nuptial agreements, divorce, child custody, adoption, spousal abuse; gay, bisexual, and lesbian issues; family business succession, and euthanasia.

The essential guide to successful couples therapy at every stage of the lifecycle A variety of therapeutic interventions can help couples develop the tools for a successful relationship. Yet many practitioners begin seeing couples without extensive training in couples work. To fill this gap in their therapeutic repertoires, noted couples therapist Michele Harway brings together other well-known experts in marriage and family therapy to offer the Handbook of Couples Therapy, a comprehensive guide to the study and practice of couples therapy. The book's chapters provide a variety of perspectives along developmental, theoretical, and situational lines. Recognizing the need for clinically proven, evidence-based approaches, chapters provide detailed coverage of the most effective treatment modes. Couples at different stages of the lifecycle feature prominently in the text, as do relevant special issues and treatment approaches for each stage. Subjects covered include: Premarital counseling from the PAIRS perspective (an extensive curriculum of interventions for premarital couples) The first years of marital commitment Couples with young children Couples with adolescents Therapy with older couples Same sex couples A variety of theoretical approaches, including Cognitive-Behavioral, Object Relational, Narrative, Integrative, and Feminist and Contextual Special issues and situations, including serious illness, physical aggression, addiction, infidelity, and religious/spiritual commitments or conflicts Providing a diverse set of treatment approaches suited to working with a wide range of adult populations, the Handbook of Couples Therapy is an essential resource for mental health professionals working with couples.

Ethics and Professional Issues in Couple and Family Therapy, Second Edition builds upon the strong foundations of the first edition. This new edition addresses the 2015 AAMFT Code of Ethics as well as other professional organizations’ codes of ethics, and includes three new chapters: one on in-home family therapy, a common method of providing therapy to clients, particularly those involved with child protective services; one chapter on HIPAA and HITECH Regulations that practicing therapists need to know; and one chapter on professional issues, in which topics such as advertising, professional identity, supervision, and research ethics are addressed. This book is intended as a training text for students studying to be marriage and family therapists.

While on some issues couple and family therapists have an exquisitely clear direction from professional codes of ethics, others fall under gray areas that instead rely on therapists making reasoned ethical decisions. Therapists need to develop ethical sensitivity to potential ethical issues in order to decrease their risk in practice, and increase their maneuverability in the therapy room. In Ethics and Professional Issues in Couple and Family Therapy, Lorna Hecker and her contributing authors address various clinical scenarios that demonstrate the complex ethical situations couple and family therapists face every day. Some points discussed in this holistic book include boundary, power, and privilege issues, along with unique ethical issues in practicing therapy with children. Risk issues when working with potential danger, suicide, and partner violence are also explored. Each chapter sensitizes readers to potential ethical issues and provides a model for ethical decision making that best promotes good on behalf of clients. Couple and family therapists will find this text an invaluable and inexhaustible resource.

A revised new edition of one of the top references for forensic psychologists This top professional and academic reference in forensic psychology is an established presence as both a professional reference and graduate text. This Fourth Edition is completely revised and updated for the new and rapidly growing demands of the field to reflect the new tools available to, and functions required of, present-day practitioners. The new edition expands coverage of neuropsychological assessment, eyewitness testimony, ad jury competence and decision-making, including selection, process and authority. In addition, the new ethics guidelines approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) are included and interpreted. Updated to include reframed content and the introduction of new chapter topics and authors Ideal for professional forensic psychologists and graduate students Written by experts in the field, a clinical professor of psychiatry and an associate professor of mental health policy

The concept of the "emotional ledger" was formulated by the trans-generational family systems theorist, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, and is a key idea in contextual theory. According to Boszormenyi-Nagy, the emotional ledger of the family is a balance sheet of indebtedness, entitlement and obligations that accrue in the processes of give-and-take between individuals and generations over decades. Families in business together often suffer from the commingling of the financial ledger of tangible assets and the emotional ledger of intangible liabilities. Regardless of our professional discipline, much of our work is in service to balancing the complexities of our client's emotional ledger. This book is about that process. While it was written with the non-clinical advisor in mind, it will be valuable to anyone who needs to understand the complexities and challenges of being a family in business.

Same-sex marriage emerged in 2004 as one of the hottest issues of the campaign season. But in a severe blow to gay rights advocates, all eleven states that had the issue on the ballot passed amendments banning the practice, and the subject soon dropped off the media’s radar. This pattern of waxing and waning in the public eye has characterized the debate over same-sex marriage since 1996 and the passing of the Defense of Marriage Act. Since then, court rulings and local legislatures have kept the issue alive in the political sphere, and conservatives and gay rights advocates have made the issue a key battlefield in the culture wars. The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage brings together an esteemed list of scholars to explore all facets of this heated issue, including the ideologies and strategies on both sides of the argument, the public’s response, the use of the issue in political campaigns, and how same-sex marriage fits into the broad context of policy cycles and windows of political opportunity. With comprehensive coverage from a variety of different approaches, this volume will be a vital sourcebook for activists, politicians, and scholars alike.