Advanced Family Work for Schizophrenia: An Evidence-Based Approach
Julian Leff
This book is a
companion volume to Family Work for
Schizophrenia (second edition) and gives
more detailed explanations of how to work with difficult cases.
For more than ten
years, Professor Leff has been supervising family work for
psychosis with mental health teams in North and South London. From
comprehensive records of about 150 families discussed during
supervision, he has distilled 19 anonymised case histories
illustrating the most difficult problems encountered in such work.
Each family is described in detail as presented by the supervisee.
Then, the author gives his understanding of the problems in a
social and cultural context, and makes recommendations for ongoing
family work. Follow-up of the families ranges from three to 30
months, and is charted with further recommendations at each
supervision session. A summary is presented of the work with each
family, including its successes and failures and the lessons
learned. The detailed histories and follow-ups constitute an ideal
learning experience for both skilled therapists and novices engaged
in family work with patients suffering from psychosis.
Contents
- Introduction
- Culture clash
- People with a psychotic illness and a physical condition
- More than one family member with a psychosis
- Parents in a conflictual relationship or separated
- Dysfunctional families
- Unresolved past trauma
- Exploitative carer
- Postscript
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“It has been a truly enriching
experience to read this book. It is clear and readable. ...This
book would benefit not only clinicians who have little experience
in family therapy but also trained therapists involved in working
with families with serious mental illness.”
Primary Care and Community
Psychiatry
|
"A thoughtful workbook of well-honed examples, full of
user-friendly formulations and pragmatic suggestions informed by a
lifetime of working and researching in the field."
Psychiatric Bulletin
"Leff's particular talent is for distilling complex situations
into readily understandable themes, which then lead to often
deceptively simple interventions that always manage to be
respectful to those involved."
Psychiatric Bulletin