Abstract
It is unfortunate that despite an alarming, worldwide increase in the rate of divorce in recent decades, there has been a general paucity of mental health literature written with the express purpose of focusing on and discussing the many and varied deleterious effects of parental divorce on child and adolescent populations in society at large. In addition to this dearth of available literature, there have been even fewer publications written to address potential treatment protocols and clinical “pearls,” which may be useful to mental health professionals working with affected youth from these disrupted home environments resulting from parental divorce.
In response to the relative lack of valuable literature, this chapter will first comprehensively review and summarize the most up-to-date literature available, addressing the ever-increasing problem of parental divorce in the lives of today’s youth. This chapter will then highlight the clinical principles presented in the literature review through an in-depth discussion of details of a pertinent case history, in which an individual family’s experiences throughout the divorce process are described in detail. Finally, this case history will be used to demonstrate a variety of clinically salient facts, observations, and treatment options for youth struggling with the negative effects of parental divorce throughout their lives. The most clinically relevant information will be compiled as a separate section of take-home points at the end of this chapter in order to facilitate future reference to the clinical materials discussed herein.
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Barczak, B., Miller, T.W., Veltkamp, L.J., Barczak, S., Hall, C., Kraus, R. (2010). Transitioning the Impact of Divorce on Children Throughout the Life Cycle. In: Miller, T. (eds) Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0748-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0748-6_10
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