Preface

As we began preparing the fourth edition of this book, it was interesting to review the Prefaces to the earlier editions. Most interesting was the Preface to the first edition: We noted that there really wasn’t much scholarly work devoted to therapeutic interventions with children and adolescents. The impetus to the first edition was the lack of options in choosing textbooks for courses in counseling and psychotherapy with children and adolescents. At the time, books were either focused on single theories or were downward extensions of adult-based theory. Gratifyingly, this has changed.

Our aim in this edition is similar to the earlier editions—to offer comprehensive overviews of major theoretical approaches to interventions with children and adolescents. We continue to place great value on the understanding of theory while acknowledging the need to integrate approaches and to have multiple options for dealing with the array of child and adolescent social-emotional difficulties. We also strongly feel that legal, ethical, and multicultural issues cut across all intervention areas and that issues in working with children and adolescents with disabilities and health conditions is a major role for mental health professionals.

In this edition, all chapters have been updated to reflect the current status of the area. We are fortunate to have kept most of our earlier authors and to have added some highly qualified chapter authors. The most notable changes in this edition are in the cognitive-behavioral (formerly behavioral) chapter that reflects contemporary trends in that area and in the family systems chapter. In the family systems chapter, substantive content has been added on solution-focused approaches to intervention.

We wish to thank our chapter authors for their contributions and enthusiasm with this project. We also wish to thank Patricia Rossi of Wiley for her efforts in the development of this fourth edition and her patience!

H. Thompson Prout

Douglas T. Brown