In the last decade, mental health professionals have been under mounting pressure to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of their treatment choices and practices. Progress has been made, related in part to improvements and refinements in diagnostic classifications that are increasingly empirically determined and behaviorally based. Historically, however, research on the treatment of children and adolescents has lagged behind research on the treatment of adults. The growing realization that early intervention can prevent serious psychological dysfunction in adulthood has stimulated much more...

This book offers clear and direct answers to the questions most frequently asked by students and trainees learning how to talk to clients and extract critical data from them. Its development reflects the old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention." For many years, the editors taught beginning level mental health clinicians. They found, however, no text to be satisfactory--including a number that they themselves were involved in producing. Some were too difficult; some were too simplistic; some were too doctrinaire; still others had missing elements. Written in a reader-friendly...