Beliefs: the heart of healing in families and illness (Families & Health) [Hardcover]

Lorraine M. Wright (Author), Wendy L. Watson (Author), Janice M. Bell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 1996

In this seasoned and lucid book, a team of female clinicians offers professional practitioners and families a means for uncovering, distinguishing, and challenging a family’s belief system to facilitate healing. Professionals often will privilege their own stories about illness, but the authors of this volume illustrate the power of recognizing and using the stories and experiences of families. Beliefs, they show, are at the heart of health and healing.Discovering and working with beliefs is not a process that requires a one time prescription or a twelve-step program. Rather, as Lorraine Wright, Wendy Watson, and Janice Bell convince us through their advanced clinical approach, rich with clinical examples and detail, this process is subtle, nuanced, and demanding. Throughout the book they integrate theory and research with key therapeutic moves and interventions. The result is an effective approach that allows the therapist-family team to open spaces for altering, challenging, and modifying constraining beliefs.Although physical illness can have a significant impact on individual and family functioning, this book describes how each family member—with his or her own particular beliefs—influences the health of the family. This book is the first to offer a specific method to explore, assess, and intervene with family members’ beliefs. Nurses, social workers, psychologists, family therapists, family physicians, and other health professionals who assist families experiencing illness will appreciate the in-depth description of this clinical approach. Beliefs fills a void in family health care literature and sounds a convincing, compassionate voice within the community of professionals who work to alleviate emotional and physical suffering.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lorraine M. Wright, R.N., Ph.D., is director of the Family Nursing Unit and professor on the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. Wendy L. Watson, R.N., Ph.D., is professor of Marriage and Family Programs at Brigham Young University. Janice M. Bell, R.N., Ph.D., is research coordinator at the Family Nursing Unit and associate professor on the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (October 31, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465023177
• ISBN-13: 978-0465023172
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Families provide Hope, October 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Beliefs: the heart of healing in families and illness (Families & Health) (Hardcover)

I believe your book is insightful: it searches to the primary healing attributes of the family system. Of all theory, hope is the key to helping families face conflict, despair, joy and sorrow. It is the family which gives of life and it there at the time of death.