Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy Solutions with Difficult Adolescents

Few therapists dispute the difficulties in treating "troublesome" or "reluctant" adolescents. Filling a gap in the literature, this volume specifically addresses the clinician's needs for working with this difficult population. Matthew D. Selekman presents a Solution-Oriented Brief Family Therapy approach, a highly pragmatic and innovative therapy model for working with these challenging cases. Encouraging therapeutic improvisation and incorporating the use of humor, Selekman demonstrates how the clinician can capitalize on the strengths and resources of family members, peers, and other involved mental health professionals to resolve the client's presenting problems rapidly. His approach artfully integrates cutting edge therapeutic ideas from Steve de Shazer, Michael White, Tom Andersen, and the Galveston group.

Dispelling the notion that the Solution-Oriented Brief Therapy model is merely a "band-aid" approach, the author demonstrates powerful methods for facilitating systemic, lasting change. PATHWAYS TO CHANGE includes many helpful features that enable mental health and addiction professionals to conduct effective brief therapy successfully with difficult adolescents and their families. Selekman provides detailed guidelines for therapeutic task design and selection, purposeful systemic interviewing, and empirically based strategies for engaging difficult adolescents, and ways to collaborate with involved helping professionals from larger systems. He also presents a blueprint for how to conduct his Solution-Oriented Parenting group, which can be utilized as an alternative to regular family therapy or when therapists are unable to engage the adolescents in treatment.

Incorporating case examples and actual interview transcripts to highlight key therapeutic techniques, Selekman presents a comprehensive, ecosystemic therapeutic approach that provides useful therapeutic options for working with a challenging population. PATHWAYS TO CHANGE is an important resource for psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, addiction professionals, family therapists, and anyone working with difficult adolescents and their families.

Matthew D. Selekman, MSW, has a family therapy training practice in Evanston, IL. An Approved Supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, he has presented workshops on Solution-Focused Therapy with children and adolescents extensively throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of Pathways to Change: Brief Therapy Solutions with Difficult Adolescents and the coeditor of Family Therapy Approaches with Adolescent Substance Abusers, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Systemic Therapies.