The high incidence of divorce today has surfaced the emotional/legal issues involved in the divorce process. Mental health clinicians recognize the severe emotional trauma which divorced couples experience. The interdependency of the marital relationship is severed and each member must face that loss. A continuing relationship is often required…

Familial psychosocial development is a series of choice points, or crises, and progressive separations from the family itself. The role of the family therapist is to help the family members evolve concurrently to stages of higher maturity and autonomy. A family therapy model based on developmental stage theory is proposed. (Author)

Discusses the emotional impact of a stillbirth on a family. The Perinatal Mortality Counseling Program (PMCP) at Shands Teaching Hospital, Gainesville, Florida, provides crisis intervention and support for these families, as well as serving a research function. Outlines the program, including its history, composition, procedures, and research.…

A shift from the traditional individual student-therapist relationship to the student-family-therapist triad is expected to occur with increasing enrollment of older students. Within a limited number of sessions, focus on the family is appropriate for assessment and therapeutic reasons. (JN)

A mental health program in the schools is described which uses a nurse trained in mental health, with the support of a psychiatrist, to coordinate a mental health team and act as a liaison between the school and the health professionals, to assess referrals and arrange team meetings to plan interventions. (JMF)

HOMEBUILDERS, a home-based crisis intervention model, is described. The core beliefs of the program are listed; therapists' availability and caseloads are discussed; and reasons for limiting intervention to a four-week period are indicated. (BC)

Discusses the use of a solution-focused approach by child welfare workers to interviewing children and families in crisis and risk situations. Notes that this practice accepts a systemic view, acknowledging the importance of context on people and their problems; holds a belief in client self-determination; and indicates respect for individuals.…

The authors discuss their first efforts at providing a contact point where young people could come for information crisis intervention and talk. Major mistakes, such as too exclusive reliance on ex-users, are elaborated. Clients' demographic and psychiatric data receive brief mention, as does the initial screening procedure. The bulk of the paper…

Reported parent-child problems within the home are often composed of numerous instances in which the children refuse to help with household chores, bicker among themselves or engage in verbally inappropriate behavior toward the parents. Traditional family therapy, even when long-term, has not been notably successful in ameliorating these problems.…

Describes a Pennsylvania school's successful group counseling program developed to help students cope with divorce in their families. (MD)

Project CARE was developed by the West Shores School District (Lemoyne, Pennsylvania) to provide supportive services for at-risk students. It provides programs to address issues of child abuse, family crises, suicide, and student abduction. MD)

Rapprochement among competing methods and views of marital and family therapy constitutes a major creative challenge for the field in the 1980s. Although integrative efforts have begun, psychodynamic understanding of intimate relationships is necessary for continuation of integrative process growth. (Author/NRB)

This paper describes Crisis Theory, which views certain life events as creating hazards for individual and family growth. Family therapists should sieze every opportunity to intervene during crisis periods and view these periods as transitional states, with opportunities for enhanced growth and functioning. (Author)

This paper calls for the incorporation of family counseling into rehabilitation programs treating cognitive-communicative disorders in head-injured individuals. The paper describes general family responses that may be anticipated when a family system experiences head injury, functional versus dysfunctional family responses to a crisis, and three…

While adoption is a goal for welfare services when children cannot remain at home, adoption should not become a goal unless family reunification cannot occur. Recent initiatives take an oversimplified approach to agency standards, creating misunderstanding of programs. Adoption rates of agencies should be rewarded only after estimating pool of…