Adolescents in Psychiatric Hospitals: A Psychodynamic Approach to Evaluation and Treatment

Adolescence,  Fall, 1999  

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BRUNSTETTER, Richard W. Adolescents in Psychiatric Hospitals: A Psychodynamic Approach to Evaluation and Treatment. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1998. 190pp. $45.95 (h), $32.95 (p).

This book is divided into five sections. Part 1 traces the development of adolescent inpatient psychiatry and the methodologies that it has employed, including the psychodynamic approach. Part 2 takes the reader into the world of the adolescent inpatient unit, providing exposure to the struggles of a typical program. Part 3 provides a dynamic conceptual basis for thinking about adolescents and their problems. Part 4 deals with treatment methods: individual therapy, family work, psychopharmacology, and crisis intervention. Part 5 is a discussion of the ways in which psychodynamic methods can be adapted to fit better into short-term situations so that hospital care does not need to relinquish the insight and understanding that they offer. The book is built around the stories of patients, adolescents caught up in problems not wholly of their own making and, not always but sometimes, finding their way, with help, toward a better future than they might otherwise have had. These stories argue for a planful approach to the treatment of adolescents and for programs that attend to the therapeutic task just as much as they do to cost reduction.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Libra Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group