Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long-Term Clients in Mental Health Services (Haworth Series in Brief & Solution-Focused Therapies) - Softcover

Joel K. Simon; Thorana S. Nelson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 078902795X ISBN 13: 9780789027955

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Valuable patient-centered ideas for treating mental illness

Traditional forms of mental health care can often center more on simply avoiding hospitalization than on promoting wellness by focusing on a patient’s personal feelings and hopes. In fact, these established methods can even have a dehumanizing and devaluing effect on a patient. Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long-Term Clients in Mental Health Services is a practical introduction and guide that provides practitioners an alternative way of thinking about and working with individuals who have been long-term users of the mental health system. Through interviews, case studies, and actual client testimony, this valuable text demonstrates the most effective ways to establish patient-centered conversations that forge collaborative relationships, realize strengths, and use them to move toward healing.

Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long-Term Clients in Mental Health Services is a strength-based approach that utilizes a client’s personal and social resources to help them find a satisfactory solution to the sources of their need for professional help. This book offers a unique approach that can be applied to those who have been in the mental health system for many years and may remain so. Accessible and useable, this guide explores the meaning of conventional diagnosis and treatment and how both can actually reinforce the client’s disability, chronicity, and sense of helplessness as a person.

Topics Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long-Term Clients in Mental Health Services covers include:

• the tools of solution-focused brief practice
• working with borderline personality disorder
• adaptability and application to different contexts
• reading the client during discussion sessions
• emphasizing an individual’s healthy parts
• the role of community support
• rethinking the medical model
• implementing solution-focused practices in agencies and hospitals
• poststructuralism, social constructionism, and language games
• and many more!

Solution-Focused Brief Practice with Long-Term Clients in Mental Health Services is extensively referenced with a detailed bibliography. It is an essential resource for psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, family therapists, counselors, nurse practitioners, and schools of social work and family therapy training programs. Staff of inpatient psychiatric hospitals, psycho-social clubs, and community mental health clinics will also benefit from this indispensable text.

About this title

About the Author:

Joel K. Simon, CSW-R, BCD, ACSW, is Director of Social Work and Support Services at the Hospice of Orange and Sullivan Counties in Newburgh, New York. With over 27 years of experience as a therapist, clinical supervisor, program manager, trainer, and consultant, Mr. Simon is the author of several solution-focused articles and a founding member and webmaster of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Association. He is a licensed New York State social worker, a board certified diplomate in clinical social work, a member of the National Association of Social Workers and of the Academy of Certified Social Workers.

Thorana S. Nelson, PhD, is Professor of Marital and Family Therapy in Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development at Utah State University, Logan. Dr. Nelson has been practicing family therapy for over 24 years and is a clinical member and approved supervisor of AAMFT. She is a founding member and sits on the Board of Directors of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Association, and a member of the American Family Therapy Academy.

Review:

A stunningly useful book... Even the seasoned therapist will find some provoking and stimulating interventions... If you are entering the field of psychotherapy as a clinician, and have little or no experience in the world of 'psychotic disorders' and 'borderlines,' you should read this book. . . .

If you are already in the field, and are struggling to avoid burnout, there are examples here that can help you rediscover the useful skills and resources within your clients and yourself. . . If you are an administrator with thoughts of implementing or reorganizing a clinical unit to encourage the use of effective solutions and patient-oriented goals, the section on meta-systemic considerations is essential reading... The text that your students will take to their clinical placement for guidance. -- Richard Ebling, MS, LCSW, Therapist in Private Practice, SunDance Behavioral Resources

At last, a book i can recommend to the many front-line mental health workers who ask me to recommend a book about using the solution-focused approach in front-line mental health. The basic under-pinning principles of the approach are clearly and succinctly summarised. . . . Written in a respectful way and its critiques of the medical model are constructive. I can highly recommend this work to all practitioners in mental health settings whatever their discipline. -- Brian Cade, Brief Therapist, Private Practice, Sydney, Australia; Primary Author (with W. H. O'Hanlon), A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy

Simon and Nelson are to be thanked and congratulated for showing solution-focused ways to work respectfully and effectively with often difficult clients. Alternating excellent real-life case illustrations with useful theory and commentary, this book should be welcome reading for anyone who wishes to move toward the light rather than curse the darkness. -- Michael F. Hoyt, PhD, author of Some Stories are Better than Others, The Present is a Gift, Interviews with Brief Therapy Experts, and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Solution focused counseling at its reliable best in what some might say was the more difficult personal terrain of persistent mental troubles. . . . A whole book about working successfully with 'difficult' cases in the solution focused way. The authors show us, over and over again, just how to do it. -- Lance Taylor, MSc, Chartered Psychologist, President of the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 078902795X
• ISBN 13: 9780789027955
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192