Promote culturally competent social work practice with families of many traditions!

This broad-ranging book highlights the enormous importance of the family in enhancing individuals’ health and in safeguarding mental health. Families and Health offers an international scope and a multicultural frame of reference. The original research presented here includes both qualitative and quantitative studies on the role of family support in maintaining personal well-being.

These empirical studies look at groups as diverse as elderly Samoans living in Hawaii, Nigerian families living in Africa, and children of all races and ethnic groups living in Florida foster care. The results are consistent across the cultures, however. Good family support prevents many health problems and ameliorates such unpreventable ones as aging. Poor family support leads to increased physical and emotional illness as well as higher rates of drug abuse and other addictions.

Families and Health discusses the role healthy families play in various health and mental health issues, including:

• preventing drug use
• successful treatment for substance abuse
• caregiving of the frail elderly
• dealing with relatives who suffer from schizophrenia
  
  This helpful book will be of use in promoting culturally competent practice among social workers, psychologists, therapists, and gerontologists. It will also be of interest to policymakers, health and wellness researchers, and scholars in ethnic studies.