Parenting and Substance Abuse: Developmental Approaches to Intervention

Historically, there has been little integration of theoretical or applied research on addiction treatment and parenting intervention development. Rather, the fields of addiction and developmental research have progressed on largely separate trajectories, even though their focus powerfully and often tragically intersects each time a parent is diagnosed with a substance use disorder.

Parenting and Substance Abuse is the first book to report on pioneering efforts to move the treatment of substance-abusing parents forward by embracing their roles and experiences as mothers and fathers directly and continually across the course of treatment. The chapters in this volume represent important new strides among researchers and clinicians to address and close the increasingly recognizable gap between addiction and developmental science. Chapters focus on current, state-of-the-art treatment models for parents, primarily pregnant and parenting women, including descriptions of innovative treatments currently being developed and evaluated that focus on parental addiction and the parent-child relationship within a developmental framework. Part I covers the theoretical understandings of how addiction impacts the developmental processes of parenting. Part II discusses risk assessment, evaluation, and a variety of interventions and therapies. This unique volume will be of importance to clinicians, researchers, students, and trainees in the health professions who develop, implement, and evaluate interventions for parental addiction, including in well-baby clinics, primary care settings, pediatric clinics, and residential and outpatient drug treatment programs.

Nancy E. Suchman, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center and Associate Director of Substance Abuse and Family Research at Yale University School of Medicine.

Marjukka Pajulo, MD, PhD, is a Docent in early childhood psychiatry, infant psychiatrist, and senior researcher at Turku University Hospital and the University of Turku, Finland.

Linda C. Mayes, MD, is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology in the Yale Child Study Center. She is also a Special Advisor to the Dean at Yale University School of Medicine and chairman of the directorial team of the Anna Freud Centre, London.