Provides an overview of the causes and treatment approaches for counseling families under stress, and focuses on several examples of extreme tension.

Provides an overview of the causes and treatment approaches for counseling families under stress, and focuses on several examples of extreme tension.

Why do some families survive stressful situations while others fall apart? Can a family's beliefs and values be used as a predictor of vulnerability to stress? And most importantly, can family stress be prevented? In this Second Edition, Pauline Boss continues to explore both the larger context surrounding families and stress and the inner context, which includes perceptions and meanings. The author emphasizes the need for a more general contextual model of family stress that may be applicable to a wider diversity of people and families as well as a wider variety of stresses and crises than other models. The goal is to provide a framework for students and professionals engaged in helping families learn how to manage their stress.

The new edition of the classic Helping Traumatized Families not only offers clinicians a unified, evidence-based theory of the systemic impact of traumatic stress—it also details a systematic approach to helping families heal by promoting their natural healing resources. Though the impact of trauma on a family can be growth producing, some families either struggle or fail to adapt successfully. Helping Traumatized Families guides practitioners around common pitfalls and toward a series of evidence-based strategies that they can use to help families feel empowered and ultimately to thrive by developing tools for enhancing resilience and self-regulation.

First Published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Handbook of Stress, Trauma, and the Family is broken down into three sections, compiling research, theory and practice. The first section focuses on how traumatic stress affects intimate others, what familial characteristics affect individual susceptibility to trauma, as well as evaluation of the effectiveness of various interventions. The section on theory explores concepts of stress and intrapsychic processes underlying the intergenerational transmission of trauma, addressesing how families can buffer or enhance anxiety. The final section, entitled practice, covers assessment (presenting both the Circumplex Model and Bowenian family theory models), treatment models and treatment formats for specific populations. The major family treatment models applicable to stress and trauma are discussed, including contextual, object relations, emotionally focused and critical interaction therapy.

This book is aimed at practitioners working with couples and families dealing with the impact of a traumatic/stressful event, with chapters considering events such as the loss of a child, infertility in a couple, sexual abuse of a partner, traumatization of a parent, traumatization of a child, impact of a homicide, and the impact of health problems of aging parents. Therapists are continually faced with these issues in their practices, and cases involving these situations are often among the most intense and emotionally demanding that they will confront. One of the supports a therapist can have available when confronted with such a situation is a practical guide to effective intervention. This book would provide the practitioner with just that -- a hands-on, practical guide that deals with how to appropriately respond to each specific stressor that is outlined in the book. Because each chapter is devoted to a different stressor, the practitioner is able to easily reference the desired material, in order to anticipate relevant issues, and plan for an intervention that will be based on the solid experience these authors will bring to the book.