Children in Family Contexts, First Edition: Perspectives on Treatment

Based on the premise that the family is a child's primary resource, this much-needed work bridges the gap between family therapy and child therapy by putting the child's experience into a family context. A unique and wide-ranging examination of young children within families and the larger systems that contain them, this volume features noted therapists who represent a variety of theoretical systemic models. They apply these approaches to the understanding of children, their families, and the diversity of challenges and environmental conditions that confront them.

Organized into five parts, Section I of CHILDREN IN FAMILY CONTEXTS addresses general issues from the point of view of the child mental health professional, examining treatment, development, and dysfunction, and demonstrating how the introduction of a family systems framework enriches these perspectives. Section II examines children in different types of family structures including two-parent, single-parent, adoptive, and remarried families. Section III covers some of the kinds of exceptional difficulties that families with young children often have to face. Children with cognitive handicaps, chronic physical illness, and obesity are discussed as well as such topics as the death of a parent, parental substance abuse, and mental illness. Section IV focuses on the interface between families and the larger systems including the extended family, schools, the legal system, and foster-care or placement systems. And Section V discusses the ways in which agencies, attitudes, and families shape both beliefs and management.

Diverse in its approach, CHILDREN IN FAMILY CONTEXTS demonstrates that assessing and working through the family relationship constitutes a powerful means of supporting and sustaining child development. As such, the book is an invaluable resource for any clinician who treats either children or families with children. It also serves as an enlightening text for graduate courses in family and child therapy.

Lee Combrinck-Graham, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist. She is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The editor of Children in Family Contexts, she is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on children, families, and the systems in which they live.