Helping Couples and Families Navigate Illness and Disability ─ An Integrative Approach

Couples and families face daunting challenges as they cope with serious illness and disability. This book gives clinicians a roadmap for helping affected individuals and their loved ones live well with a wide range of child, adult, and later-life conditions. John S. Rolland describes ways to intervene with emerging challenges over the course of long-term or life-threatening disorders. Using vivid case examples, he illustrates how clinicians can help families harness their strengths for positive adaptation and relational growth. Rolland's integrated systemic approach is useful for preventive screening, consultations, brief counseling, more intensive therapy, and multifamily groups, across health care settings and disciplines. This book significantly advances the clinical utility of Rolland’s earlier landmark volume, Families, Illness, and Disability.

John S. Rolland, MD, MPH, is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also Co-Founder and Executive Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Family Health and director of its Families, Illness, and Collaborative Healthcare Program. Internationally recognized for his integrative conceptual model, clinical work, and research on couple and family psychosocial challenges with serious health conditions, Dr. Rolland is author of the landmark volume Families, Illness, and Disability and coeditor of Individuals, Families, and The New Era of Genetics. He is past president of the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA); Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association; Senior Fellow of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Family Committee; past board member of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association; and former Fellow of the Yale University Institute for Social and Policy Studies. Dr. Rolland is a recipient of the Innovative Contributions to Family Therapy Award from AFTA and the Blanche F. Ittleson Award from the American Orthopsychiatric Association (now the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice). He is an active speaker and consultant on family-oriented systemic approaches with illness and disability challenges.