Martha B. Straus – författare

The author describes the book’s theoretical framework as the ecology of violence; therapists can intervene to stop violence on any of four ecological levels—individual, family, community, social policy. Following a brief history of adolescence in America, Chapter 1 explores the effects of violence on normal adolescent and family development. Chapters 2 through 6 present five case studies, which illustrate the ecological approach to five crucial issues: suicide attempts, sexual abuse/running away, delinquency, juvenile sexual offending, and physical abuse of adolescents. For each case the author not only presents theory and research, but also demonstrates the process of individual and family treatment.The final two chapters discuss community and self-help approaches and social policy development as ways for curbing adolescent violence. Action at these two higher ecological levels, community and social policy, influence the extent to which violence will shape the lives of adolescents; these two chapters suggest that today’s victims are not inevitably tomorrow’s victims and offenders.Despite the difficulties of living with, working with, and being an adolescent, this developmental period offers wonderful opportunities to break the cycle of violence. To intervene most effectively, therapists have to be able to view violence through personal, professional, and political lenses. This book offers a way to put what we know, and what works, into action.

Weaving practical, hands-on ideas with theory and research about child development, child treatment, and the therapeutic relationship, this book describes an innovative approach to treatment of children and adolescents who won’t or can’t respond to traditional, conversation-based therapy. Within an interpersonal and developmental framework, Martha Straus spells out the deceptively simple goals of no-talk therapy: someone to be close to, and something to be proud of.As Straus demonstrates in her case examples, no-talk children fit many diagnostic pictures. Many start out hesitant about the whole enterprise of therapy, and a few remain intractably detached despite the therapist’s best efforts to engage them. For some, the interpersonal requirements of problem-talk or play therapy are well beyond their developmental level. Others may have an abundance of talking and playing skills and be determined not to use them. Most have had lives that are unspeakably hard. Ironically, traditional therapy, with its most fundamental purpose of helping children feel better, is painfully uncomfortable for no-talk children and adolescents.For these children, therapists need an entirely new clinical language, one that doesn’t depend on words.Through empathy and respect, games, activities, community involvement, a circle of adults, and little pleasures, this approach emphasizes individual connection, competence, and creativity. Going beyond other methods, no-talk therapy begins to provide these anxious, sullen, enraged, and confused kids with the self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-awareness to develop a voice of their own.Straus opens for readers a huge grab bag of gimmicks, gadgets, and games, from which to draw resources appropriate to every no-talk occasion. Most of all, she offers herself as an engaged, creative, fallible, caring therapist who hears the pain—and the strengths—in the silence.

Some try to disappear through starvation; others carve indecipherable symbols or other marks onto their arms and bodies; some run away from home; and still others bully and get bullied, hide weeping in their rooms, or attempt suicide.Programs, experts, and interventions abound, but therapists and caregivers alike struggle to effectively help this challenging population. For every success in turning a troubled girl around, there seem to be new, even sadder cases to take its place. The list of reasons, as Straus explains, are complicated and varied everything from weak, fragmented interventions and overwhelmed institutions with inadequate resources to a growing gap between the rich and poor, ignorant parents, overcrowded schools, and a more violence-saturated society than ever before.Using a developmental-relational model of intervention, Straus explores the ways in which clinicians and caregivers can successfully reach out to the children behind these often frightening behaviors, and how to help them cope. A highly practical resource, Adolescent Girls in Crisis explores concrete strategies and methods for helping girls in crisis by focusing on identification, diagnosis, and treatment of many of the troubled and troubling behaviors—including oppositional defiant disorder, trauma, eating disorders, and attachment problems, among others—what to look for before there's a crisis (and in one), what to worry about, and, most of all, what to do.