Brief Strategic Family Therapy in Practice, DVD

With José Szapocznik, PhD

Closed Captioned
Publication Date: January 2020

ORDER CODE: APA-4310016


Brief strategic family therapy is an effective, evidence-based approach to working with families of children and adolescents that are in crisis. Such families often come to therapy unwillingly or as a last resort, after they have exhausted all other options. This therapeutic approach focuses on changing interactional patterns from conflictive to collaborative, and in the process restoring the parents’ sense of competence and increasing nurturance and caring within the family.

In this video, Dr. José Szapocznik works with a blended family that have been experiencing tension and arguments, and whose teenage son has been using substances, skipping school, and associating with delinquent friends. Dr. Szapocznik shows how this approach can change negative interactions into positive and increase each family member’s sense of belonging.

The clients in this demonstration are portrayed by actors on the basis of a composite of actual cases.

About the Therapist
José Szapocznik, PhD, is the coauthor and codeveloper of Brief Strategic Family Therapy®.

He is a professor of public health sciences, psychology, architecture and educational research, and counseling psychology at the University of Miami; director of the Brief Strategic Family Therapy Institute and the Center for Family Studies; codirector and multiple principal investigator of the Florida Node of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); chair emeritus of Public Health Sciences; and founding and honorary director of the NIH-funded Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute, all at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and he is the founding chair of the NIH-funded National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse.

About the Author
Dr. Szapocznik has held many policy roles, including membership in the NIH National Advisory Councils for the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the AIDS Program Advisory Committee (now the NIH Office of AIDS Research), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

His work has been recognized in awards and honors from APA, the American Family Therapy Academy, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, the Latino Behavioral Health Institute, and the Hispanic Health Professional Association, among others. He has received more than $125 million in NIH funding and has more than 280 scholarly publications.