Raising Parents

Helping troubled parents to raise their children adequately is of crucial importance for parents, their children and society at large. Distressed parents have themselves often been endangered and, as a consequence, sometimes endanger their children either through maltreatment or through the effects of parental psychiatric disorder. Raising Parents explains how that happens and clusters parents in terms of the psychological processes that result in maladaptive childrearing. The book then delineates DMM Integrative Treatment in terms of assessment, formulation, and treatment. New formulations are offered for problems that have resisted treatment and cases demonstrate how the ideas can be applied in real treatment settings. The book closes with 10 suggestions for improving professionals' responses to troubled families and endangered children. This edition of Raising Parents introduces DMM Integrative Treatment and demonstrates how to use it with vulnerable families. DMM Integrative Treatment is an interpersonal process and this book will be essential reading for clinicians from all disciplines, including psychiatry and psychology, social work, nursing and all types of psychotherapy.

Patricia McKinsey Crittenden works cross-culturally as a developmental psychopathologist at the Family Relations Institute, Miami, USA. She is founding Chair of the International Association for the Study of Attachment and Adjunct Associate Professor in Dalhousie University's Department of Psychiatry, Canada. She has held university appointments in Finland, Italy, and Australia as well as in the USA. She received a career achievement award for 'Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Child and Family Development' from the European Family Therapy Association in 2004. Dr Crittenden has published widely in the field, with her most recent book being Attachment and Family Therapy and a forthcoming book entitled Loving and Learning: Promoting attachment through baby play.

Part 1: Yesterday's Children: Today's Mothers and Fathers 1. Cherishing Parents 2. A Primer of DMM Theory: Twelve Crucial Constructs Part 2: Growing Up 3. Early Childhood: Learning to be Safe at Home 4. Going to School: Coping with a Complex World 5. Becoming an Adult: Loving and Leaving Part 3: Information Processing 6. Remembering the Future: The Process of Mental Representation 7. How do Parents Affect Children's Representations? 8. Representation and Child-rearing that Endangers Children Part 4: Parents' Dispositional Representations 9. Distortions of Normal Child-protective Behaviour: Under-responding to Children 10. Distortions of Normal Child-protective Behaviour: Over-responding to Children 11. Distortions of Perception: Seeing Yourself in Your Child 12. Obscured Perceptions of the Child: The Disappearing Child 13. Distortions that Substitute Erroneous Information for Accurate Information: Misconstruing Children as Being Threatened 14. Distortions that Substitute Deadly Delusional Information for Accurate Information: Misconstruing the Child as the Threat Part 5: An Integrative Approach to Treatment 15. DMM Integrative Treatment 16. When Things Fall Apart 17. Assessment Relevant to Differential Treatment 18. Functional Formulation and the Plan for Treatment 19. DMM Integrative Treatment: Three Cases 20. Do Unto Parents as You Would Have Them do Unto Their Children