Family Therapy and Beyond : A Multisystemic Approach to Treating the Behavior Problems of Children and Adolescents

Henggeler and Borduin take a research-oriented approach in their attempt to integrate family therapy and individual therapeutic approaches to resolving behavior problems of children and adolescents. Focusing on the practitioner, they describe an approach to treatment that has proven effective in several major therapy outcome studies and in years of clinical work. Chapters are devoted to assessing and intervening in individual-cognitive, marital, parent-child, family, peer, and school systems, and to developing comprehensive treatment strategies for difficult problems such as chemical dependancy, incest, and serious delinquency. While acknowledgingthat family systems conceptualizations and treatment pf behavior problems have significant advantages over traditional clinical approaches, the authors propose that family therapists have taken an unnecessarily narrow view of behavior problems and an overly restrictive approach to beahvior change. These limitations are addressed by the multisystematic approach to the treatment of psychosocial problems. This book should be of interest to advanced and graduate-level courses in clinical psychology.