Customer Reviews

Multisystemic Treatment of Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents

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Therapists working with adolescent delinquency problems have long lamented the paucity of effective treatments. Fortunately, the innovative researchers who wrote this book have developed a delinquency treatment with documented effectiveness - multisystemic treatment (MST). This manual presents the basic tenets of MST, which consist of nine principles. MST is a comprehensive treatment that targets not only the youth's behavior but also family and community factors. The treatment acknowledges that adolescents with delinquency problems are affected by factors in their environments, such as delinquent peers, parents who do not monitor their behavior, or poor educational opportunities. Thus, the treatment is usually conducted in the home and other relevant settings.

The goal of MST is to decrease rates of antisocial behavior and prevent the youth from being removed from the home; research has documented that MST meets these goals, as well as being a tremendously cost-effective treatment. I have used this treatment with a number of clients with great success (I was trained by Dr. Borduin). A prior reviewer pointed out that one should know about the authors of a psychology book before purchasing it; fortunately, the authors of this book come with excellent credentials. Drs. Henggeler, Schoenwald, Rowland, and Cunningham are on the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina, and Dr. Borduin is a Professor at the University of Missouri. In addition, their research on the treatment has been published in many peer-reviewed journals, including:

Henggeler, et al. (1999). Home-based multisystemic therapy as an alternative to the hospitalization of youths in psychiatric crisis: Clinical outcomes. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 38(11), 1331-1339.

Henggeler, et al. (1996). Multisystemic therapy: An effective violence prevention approach for serious juvenile offenders. Journal of Adolescence, 19(1), 47-61.

The manual is very well-written and easy to follow; the authors use many examples to explain the treatment implementation. Clearly this manual and MST itself have tremendous strengths. The basic tenets and principles are likely to be useful to any child/adolescent therapist, although some office-based therapists may not be able to use a pure MST model. A most highly recommended treatment guide.

I own this book. If you have a really troubled kid, you are a state or local leader, you are an agency person working with kids, your a poliician or someone who cares about the future. READ this book. Yes it's dry. Yes it's technical. So is reading about the new cancer medication that might save your life or the new HIV-vaccine research or or the new brain scan literature. Embedded insiide the methods of MST are strategies that really turn about the lives of kids, families and communities. What is inspiring is that the model presented REALLY works. What a concept! All across America-counselors, families, juvenile justice folks, school people are pulling their hair out on what to do about really difficult kids. Too, often the answer is: Throw 'em out, drug 'em out, and lock 'em up. Well, they get out eventially. MST can change all of that. It is cost effective. It has science. It has people who are doing it well all over the world.

Having been trained differently than what this book discusses, it's a little hard to wrap one's mind around the concepts, especially since people in my profession are used to a certain way of thinking and training. However, when put into practice and when read with an open mind, the book makes absolute sense. I am in the beginning stages of MST and hope that it not only works out for the population in my area, but that I can one day be an MST expert.

Informative and educational and will certianly help me with my job.

UPDATE: When I told my so-called therapist at Duke University Psychology Clinic, Sonja Schoenwald, about this event 20 years later, in 1990, she decided being raped by the dishwasher where I worked was MY FAULT because I had "engaged in risky behavior" and "did not take care of myself" because I "did not care about myself" and I needed to be on medication! That bI)&*(^&* had no answer when I asked her "what risky behavior did I engage in? Moving to New York City or taking the job?" No answer for that.

But it just goes to shows what the psychiatric profession is like and how much damage they have done to survivors of all kinds.

Freud was a perverted cocaine addict who gave coke to his own patients while having sex with them and his wife's sister, and he is the God that this profession looks up to. This so-called "healing profession." To Hell with all of them, right where they belong!

After losing the court case brought against her, "Sonja K. Schoenwald, PhD." has been working at the University of South Carolina, Family Services Research Center. She can't be licensed after losing the court case against her in North Carolina, but apparently that means nothing in South Carolina.


Avoid this woman - and those connected to her - like the plague!


Before I accepted anything a "professional" said about children, adults or anything to do with mental health or the "helping professions," I would do a thorough background check on any and all of the writers prior to believing whatever may be written or said by a certain group of people who, after all, profit from other people's trauma and grief. Has anyone ever interviewed any of the people these authors "helped?" Buyer beware!

Check the court case against Sonja K. Schoenwald filed in Durham NC Civil Court, 1993, which she has attempted to hide all these years. Ask her why she is unlicensed to this day!

To all the people who "did not find this review helpful," you can not like something all you want, but that doesn't change the facts. This is exactly why the psychiatric profession is so corrupt and does so much damage to survivors of all kinds.


Wake up and do the right thing! You've been following Freud and his coke addled, perverted mind for far too long. Would that you had to go through just one day of what your so-called "clients" have survived... maybe then you might develop some compassion and understanding which this profession so sorely needs. People like Schoenwald are puppets for the pharmaceutical companies and one day you will be called to answer for your deeds.