Non-Emerging Adulthood: Helping Parents of Adult Children with Entrenched Dependence

Description

This book offers a therapeutic approach to a problem that many families and mental health institutions face: a growing number of adult children who struggle to progress to a psychological, social adulthood. The family patterns that revolve around adult children can remain inert for decades, are often resistant to conventional therapy, and can cause chronic suffering to adult children, parents, and extended families. The authors present a guide that addresses parents of adult children as suffering people in their own right and as essential to assisting their child into entering functional adulthood. The authors, one of whom is the originator of the Non-Violent Resistance Therapy approach (NVR), provide an intervention manual that implements NVR principles for helping families of adult children. The book is based on the authors' ten-year journey of helping such families in cases where traditional interventions and therapeutic values seem not to work.

Dan Dulberger is a marriage and family therapist and a psychotherapist. He is internationally recognised as an expert in Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) therapy and teaches in the Couple and Family Therapy diploma program at the University of Calgary, Canada. Haim Omer is a professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and the developer of the Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) approach for parents, teachers, and other caregivers.

'Congratulations to Dulberger and Omer on their comprehensive book, which is replete with strategies and skills that can be applied cross-culturally with families and their adult-child struggling with entrenched dependence. This book delineates a step-by-step guide for the application of the Non-Violent Resistance therapy approach for clinicians from various disciplines working with youths, who may be reliant on their parents or carers in ways that are unhelpful and developmentally inappropriate. Using a strengths-based and culturally sensitive approach, Dulberger and Omer provide families with the necessary tools required for diverse families to intentionally be present to their children to avoid and reduce accommodating responses that fuel entrenched dependence. This timely book will be instructive to clinicians working with youth not in employment or education.' Gina Dimitropoulos, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of Calgary, Canada 'This book offers a wealth of insights for the multidisciplinary approach to the study of family violence. With their experience and the NVR approach, the authors offer a specific, methodical, and evidence-based model, which definitely finds its way into our approach that aims to empower all family members.' Pascale Franck, Vice-President, European Family Justice Centers Alliance 'There is a large, unexplored, and neglected spot on the psychotherapy map. The mental health edifice is built on the idea of offering therapy to motivated individuals who are voluntary service users, while families devastated by a troubled family member are rejected. This book promises to stop such absurdity. If there was a Nobel Prize for innovative advances in mental health, Haim Omer and Dan Dulberger would deserve it.' Ben Furman, Psychiatrist, Helsinki Brief Therapy Institute, Finland 'This wise and well-informed book is an invaluable guide for mental health professionals, who work with families where emerging adults are struggling to find their way toward a rewarding adult life. The authors provide a compelling research-based program to help parents facing the daunting problem of their grown kids' entrenched dependence.' Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Getting to 30: A Parent's Guide to the Twentysomething Years 'At last, a practical and effective approach to the all-too-common problem of adult children who do not transition to independent adulthood. Dulberger and Omer provide therapists and parents with insights to understand the phenomenon and hands-on tools to address it. This is a sorely needed resource that will bring relief to families coping with a 'failure to launch'.' Eli R. Lebowitz, Associate Professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, USA 'This is a compassionate and clear roadmap into the uncharted galaxy of an emerging world-wide problem. It is an asset to the field of family therapy and therapists working with families imprisoned in isolation and secrecy. This book gives these families a source of hope and encourages them to take courageous steps.' Jan Olthof, Dutch Society of Relationship and Family Therapy, the Netherlands 'Haim Omer and Dan Dulberger's manual will meet the needs of therapists dealing with parents facing their adult child's entrenched dependence, a preoccupying social phenomenon. Their Non-Violent Resistance approach disengages parents from the vicious circle in which their personal effacement aggravates anxiety and disruptive behaviors in their adult child.' Diane Purper-Ouakil, full Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Montpellier, France 'The authors have a special sensitivity for contemporary problems. The young people who seem to refuse an adult position in the outside world are of great concern to families and society. The appealing way in which they apply non-violent resistance to this group provides a practice of hope for parents, professionals, and young adults alike. I advise anyone dealing with this issue to read this book.' Justine van Lawick, Psychologist and Systemic Therapist 'Dulberger and Omer introduce 'Adult Entrenched Dependence', a roadmap of how it evolves, evocative illustrations, and practical suggestions all in one concise volume. Most significant for our world today, their NVR approach helps release parents and their children from loneliness, secrecy, and seclusion into social support and re-engagement.' Daniel Wulff, Professor of Social Work, University of Calgary, Canada 'From first-hand experience, I can witness how crucial it is to integrate Adult Entrenched Dependence (AED) into a therapeutic road map. This book provides the perfect introduction to AED and how to implement it in the treatment. It is a must-have addition to the bookshelf of every mental health professional treating patients in the twenty-first century.' Joseph Zohar, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Tel Aviv University, and Director of Post-Trauma Center, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel 'Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.' D. L. Loers, Choice