International Family Systems Therapy

Detailing a wide range of systemic approaches to mental health and relational issues, this essential guide demonstrates the power of family systems therapy as a means of fostering genuine human, relational, and societal transformation. With contributions from more than 50 internationally recognized family therapy scholars and practitioners, this text illustrates how family systems therapy can provide a comprehensive, effective, and more humane approach to the dominant paradigm of mental health treatment. The book offers an integrative approach that blends action-oriented techniques with multigenerational and multicultural insights, and provides an understanding of children and adolescents' issues, couple crises, and losses and life adversities, and shares stories of resilience from families all over the world. Chapters explore how family and couple therapy can be used to address a variety of challenges, such as engaging children's voices in sessions, couples in which a partner suffers from a chronic illness or disability, strengthening family healing and resilience, teens at risk of suicide, the intricacies of power dynamics in couples, infertility, and much more. This text is essential reading for mental health and human service practitioners, researchers, and policymakers, as well as graduate-level trainees in all mental health disciplines.

Maurizio Andolfi, MD, is an internationally renowned child psychiatrist, Director of the Family Therapy Academy in Rome, Italy, and Editor-in-Chief of Italian journal Terapia Familiare. He is also Director of the Perth Circle for the Advancement of Family Therapy in Western Australia. Antonello D'Elia, MD, is a psychiatrist, trainer, and supervisor of the Family Therapy Academy, Italy, and Deputy Editor of Italian journal Terapia Familiare. He is also President of Società Italiana di Psichiatria Democratica. Peter Fraenkel, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the City College of New York and a former faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for the Family.

PART 1 Get Rid of Labels and Pills: Empowering Children as an Invaluable Resource 1. From Child-problems to Family Resources: A Healing Process by Maurizio Andolfi 2. Amplifying Children's Voices: Empowering Distressed Children as Family Healers by Wai Yung Lee 3. Imagination and Creativity in Family Therapy with Children Labelled with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Michele Zappella 4. Exploring the Psychological Landscape of Children with Type 1 Diabetes: A Family Approach by Tiziana Bufacchi 5. The Community Project in the Schools of the Family Institute of Porto Alegre, Brazil: Description and Purpose by José Ovídio Copstein Waldemar (2), Breno Irigoyen de Freitas, Klaus Iglesias Hensel, & Lisiane Milhoranza Rech 6. "Tell me a Story...mine!": Children and Parents Talk about Adoption by Alessandra Santona and Laura Gorla Part 2 Adolescents at High Risk: How to Listen to Their Voice 7. The Silent Adolescent in the Family Therapy Session by Peter Rober 8. Confrontative Intervention in Family Therapy with Suicidal Adolescents by Noga Nabarro 9. Adolescent Family Therapy: Considerations of Systemic and Developmental Lenses by Christine Senediak and Isabelle Feijo 10. De Corporis Momentum: The Importance of the Body in Family Therapy. by Dominique Bardou 11. Suicide Attempts in Adolescence: The Line Where Life and Death Meet by Maurizio Andolfi 12. Working with High-Risk Adolescents in Combined Group and Family Therapy by José Barrera 13. Gender Variance in Adolescence by Patrizia Petiva (2), Eva Gerino, & Rossella Siragusa 14. Multigenerational Therapy and Violence Against Children by Alejandro Astorga and Alicia Cruzat 15. Social Withdrawal in Adolescence by Francesca Ferraguzzi 16. Silent Emotions: Embodied Metaphors in Early Onset Eating Disorders in Adolescence and Pre-Adolescence by Camillo Loriedo 17. Therapeutic Work with Families and Adolescents at Risk in a Western Australian Mental Health Service by Giulia Pace Part 3 Family and Social Dimensions of Couple Crises and Divorce 18. Resolving Power Struggles in Last Chance Couple Therapy by Peter Fraenkel 19. Treating Same Sex Couples: Harnessing the Power of Love by Michael LaSala 20. Intergenerational Couple Therapy by Maurizio Andolfi and Anna Mascellani 21. Families Created from the Heart by Natividat Perez and Carmen Catalayud Lliso 22. Impact Techniques in Systemic Therapy by Umberta Telfener 23. Family/Couple Therapy through the Lens of Intimate Partner Violence: No Limits or Know Your Limits? by Elisa Agostinelli and Brian Sullivan 24. Serious Illness and Disability: Helping Couples Meet the Challenges by John S. Rolland 25. Children and Parents in Contemporary Families: From Boundary Ambiguity to the Construction of New Belongings by Salvatore D'Amore Part 4 Trauma, Loss and Resilience: The Healing Power of the Extended Family and Community 26. Changing the Subject: From System to Culture to the Event by Vincenzo Di Nicola and John Farnsworth 27. Loss and Resilience through Turbulent Times: Meaning Making, Hope, and Transformation by Froma Walsh 28. Resignification: The Gift of Elaboration and Processing a Traumatic Experience by Shulamit Graber 29. Remembering Helps Us Forget by Antonello D'Elia by Arianne Struik and Raffaella Salvo PART 5 Cultural Diversity, Migration and Social Discrimination 31. Family Transformation and Therapy in Malaysia: A Multicultural Mosaic Shaped by Historical Transformation by Bawany Chinapan and Wai-Eng Ding 32. Migration in Seven Words: An Inspirational Tool for Thinking about Family Therapy by Ivy Daure 33. Cultural Diversity as a Resource in Family Therapy by Lorena Cavalieri 34. Empowering and Supporting Japanese Families: A Gender Perspective by Tazuko Shibusawa (2), Shinichi Nakamura, Takeyoshi Nozue, Noriko Odagiri, & Mami Onishi 35. The Inventiveness of Loss Narratives of Trauma and Resilience among Palestinian Refugees Forcibly Displaced in Israel by Mustafa Qossoqsi 36. Interethnic Marriages and Family Dynamics in Senegal by Geneviève Platteau and Waly Fatou Diop 37. Introducing Climate Change in Mental Health Practice by Olga Garcia Falceto (2), Enrique Falceto de Barros, & Luisa Falceto de Barros