Several years ago, an anonymous donor gave a generous gift to the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine. The donor suggested that the gift be used to support a conference on the current dilem mas of the American family and to publish its proceedings. The current chairman of the department, Jerry Wiener, formulated the initial plans for the conference with Leon Yochelson, who had been chairman at the time the gift was made. Dr. Yochelson is now Chairman of the Board of the Psychiatric Institute of the District of Columbia. These...

This pathbreaking book paints a radical new picture of alcoholism, offering powerful evidence that most chronic alcoholics live out their lives in intact, relatively quiet family environments. The authors show, however, that living in an alcoholic family--in which alcoholism is the central theme around which family life is organized--has profound effects on family members both drinkers and nondrinkers.

Reiss presents o new model of family interaction grounded in the subtle and complex way in which a family constructs its inner life and deals with the outside world. Based upon fifteen years of research, the book offers a new understanding of the covert processes that hold a family together and, with distressing frequency, pull it apart.

Because chronic disorder is becoming an ordinary feature of family life and development, understanding its impact has become critical. This volume, and the conference proceedings it reports, represents a major effort to examine the family's response to chronic physical or psychopathological illness in one or more of its members. Recent data are revising our notions of chronic illness. Evidence is mounting that chronic psychiatric disorders reflect, in part, abnormalities of brain structure and function. In this sense, they are, in part, medical disorders. On the other hand, a number of...

One of the most notable findings in contemporary behavior genetics is that children growing up in the same family are not very comparable. Findings suggest that in order to understand individual differences between siblings it is necessary to examine not only the shared experiences but also the differences in experiences of children growing up in the same family. In the past decade a group of investigators has begun to examine the contributions of genetics, and both shared and nonshared environment to development. As with many new research endeavors, this has proven to be a difficult task...

The primary focus of this volume is to support practice by individuals and teams that deal directly either with individuals diagnosed with mental disorder or with those whose presentation causes the same dilemmas for practitioners.

The chapters draw on experience gained across a wide spectrum of settings: within the NHS, the National Offender Management Services (NOMS) and the wider criminal justice services, as well as various services for children, young people and their families. The subject matter of this text covers anti social, offending and challenging behaviors: in...