Ages: 8 to 17
Contact: Jose Szapocznik
Center for Family Studies
Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
University of Miami
1425 NW 10th Avenue
Miami, FL 33136
Phone: 305/243-8217
Fax: 305/243-5577
E-mail: jszapocz@med.miami.edu
Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) is an effective, problem-focused, and
practical approach to the elimination of substance abuse risk factors. It
successfully reduces problem behaviors in children and adolescents, 6 to 17 years,
and strengthens their families. BSFT provides families with tools to decrease
individual and family risk factors through focused interventions that improve
problematic family relations and skill building strategies that strengthen
families. It targets:
- Conduct problems
- Associations with anti-social peers
- Early substance use
- Problematic family relations
The program fosters parental leadership, appropriate parental involvement, mutual
support among parenting figures, family communication, problem solving, clear
rules and consequences, nurturing, and shared responsibility for family problems.
In addition, the program provides specialized outreach strategies to bring families into therapy.
BSFT helps children and adolescents, 6 to 17 years old, who exhibit rebelliousness
, truancy, delinquency, early substance use, and association with problem peers.
BSFT also benefits families that are affected by poor behavior management,
parental discord, anger, blaming interactions, and other problematic relations.
This program was tested and proven in Hispanic families and adapted and tested
with African-American families.
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Model Program, (PDF), 2003
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Promising Program