Family Psychoeducation for Serious Mental Illness
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Description
Research shows that many adults with serious mental illness live with or maintain contact with their families. But families are rarely given information about their relative's illness and their own needs for support are ignored. To be optimally beneficial, family members and other caregivers need education about the disorder, some knowledge of illness management techniques, and personal support. Family psychoeducation (FPE) is a powerful evidence-based psychosocial intervention that serves consumers and their families.FPE has proven efficacious in reducing relapse and hospitalization, reducing symptoms, increasing employability of persons with severe and persistent mental illness, and, in many cases, enhancing their families' well-being. Its success rests with a state-of-the-art education model for improving caregivers' understanding of their loved one's illness through learning what is known and not known about it and how to assess and cope with its manifestations. Here, in the first book of its kind, Harriet P. Lefley traces the history of FPE -- including the developments in mental health services and systems and theoretical approaches that inform it -- and the robust empirical evidence it now claims after a quarter-century of development and evaluation at major research centers around the world. Presenting first the approach's generic components, training models, and required competencies, Lefley then discusses the available variations, such as Family Education (FE), a brief manualized form of FPE offered by professionally trained family members that has some empirical support for knowledge gains and easing family distress. The result is a comprehensive, practical introduction to family psychoeducation that critically appraises the evidence and examines the model's place in contemporary mental health systems.
This groundbreaking volume is an ideal training tool for graduate students of social work, psychology, and psychiatry and a valuable addition to the clinician's armamentarium of evidence-based practices for clients with serious mental illness.
Features
- - Merges a comprehensive research overview with replicable descriptions of the major models.
- - The history of family psychoeducation (FPE) contributes to understanding how new treatment modalities may emerge.
- - This is the first book that explores, under one cover, model programs for adults and multiple variations for diverse subpopulations.
Reviews
"We hardly expected this book to be a page-turner, but that is just what we were delighted to find in this small but powerful book... To find such a scholarly text on psychoeducation that covers the topic with such passion is a rare treat...Not only is this little tome on psychoeducation for serious mental illness very readable, but it is also an authoritative source from one of the major and longstanding contributors to this field....Lefley provides a masterful review of knowledge to date and discussion of questions still remaining unanswered. This important text will move the family psychoeducation research field forward."--Carol North and David E. Pollio as reviewed in PsycCRITIQUES
"...a comprehensive, practical introduction to family psychoeducation that critically appraises the evidence and examines the model's place in contemporary mental health systems."--Family Practice: The Journal of the California Graduate School
"Written in a clear and engaging style and backed up by extensive references, this book will certainly prove valuable to mental health professionals who deal with their patients' everyday efforts toward recovery and reintegration into the community."--Psychiatric Services
About the Author(s)
Harriet P. Lefley, Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami
