Functional Family Therapy for Adolescent Behavior Problems

Adolescents with disruptive behavior problems represent one of the most difficult and recalcitrant treatment populations. These youth and their parents often enter treatment unwilling or unable to try new behaviors. This book explains how to provide Functional Family Therapy (FFT), an empirically supported, highly successful family intervention for delinquent and substance-using adolescents. FFT systematically alters important risk and protective factors associated with the problem behaviors. The FFT therapist first increases family members motivation to change by disrupting and replacing their dysfunctional attributions about themselves and each other. The therapist then works with the family to eliminate the problem behaviors and generalize new skills and interaction patterns to broader community relations.