Children of Substance-Abusing Parents

This book serves as a clinical reference for all those encountering young and adult children of substance-abusing parents regardless of the setting. The book is divided into four parts. Part I provides an overview of the existing state of knowledge regarding children of substance-abusing parents and examines the developmental effects of alcohol and other drugs on children and implications for practice. Mentalization-based treatment holds the promise of providing a way to prevent and ameliorate emotional disturbance in children and adolescents. The chapters in Part II explore treatment issues across the life span of children of parents addicted to alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs, beginning with the prenatal impact through the stages of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The emphasis is on those individuals who need treatment in a clinical setting. One of the chapters in Part III describes a variety of school-based and residential treatment programs aimed at adolescent children of substance-abusing parents, youngsters who are often at great risk to become the next generation of substance-abusing parents. Another discusses the treatment programs for the large, often overlooked, population of college students with substance-abusing parents. The last chapter in this section focuses on the programs for the growing number of children with substance-abusing incarcerated parents. The final section of this book includes four real-life personal accounts of individuals who grew up in substance-abusing families. Their descriptions of their early traumatic lives spent in an environment of domestic violence, shame and chaos reflect both the pain experienced by children of all ages as well as the resilience that is found in many such children.