Defiant Teens, First Edition: A Clinicians Manual for Assessment

This authoritative manual presents an 18-step program designed both to teach parents the skills they need to manage difficult adolescent behavior and to improve family relationships overall. The first nine steps of the program modify the approach presented in Russell A. Barkley's DEFIANT CHILDREN, SECOND EDITION, to focus on developmental concerns of adolescence. The authors delineate clear procedures for assessing defiance in teens and working with parents, alone or in groups, to reverse problem behavior. Steps 10 through 18 are conducted with parents and teenagers together, utilizing a proven family therapy model developed by Arthur L. Robin and Sharon Foster. Clinicians are shown how to help all family members learn to negotiate, communicate, and problem-solve more effectively, while facilitating adolescents' individuation and autonomy. Featuring a lay-flat binding for ease of photocopying, the book includes reproducible forms that enable clinicians to gauge the nature, diversity, and severity of parent/n-/adolescent conflicts; assess for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD); and evaluate parental psychological adjustment. Reproducible handouts for families reinforce crucial ideas and skills imparted in-session.

Russell A. Barkley, PhD, ABPP, ABCN, is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Barkley has published numerous books and five assessment scales, plus more than 260 scientific articles and book chapters on ADHD, executive functioning, and childhood defiance. He is also the editor of the newsletter The ADHD Report. A frequent conference presenter and speaker who is widely cited in the national media, he is past president of the Section on Clinical Child Psychology (the former Division 12) of the American Psychological Association, and of the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. His website is www.russellbarkley.org.

Gwenyth H. Edwards, PhD, is chief of the ADHD Child and Adolescent Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Dr. Edwards is an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and a licensed psychologist. She has provided the clinical leadership on two treatment outcome studies for children and adolescents diagnosed with both ADHD and disruptive behavior disorders; has provided diagnostic evaluations for over 2,000 children and teens; and has provided training for educators, mental health professionals, psychology graduate students, psychiatry and pediatric residents, and a variety of other professionals.

Arthur L. Robin, PhD, is Director of Psychology Training at Children's Hospital of Michigan and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University. Dr. Robin is a practicing psychologist with more than 40 years of clinical experience.