This book is intended for teachers and advisory staff of both primary and secondary school children. There are a number of contributors who have extensive experience working with children, including social workers, educational psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. The book covers a range of personal crises that might be faced by children and adolescents. The 12 chapters cover a variety of areas including child protection issues, divorce and separation, depression, eating disorders, and alcohol and drug abuse. There are also chapters that deal with helping children with mentally ill parents, with life-threatening illnesses, and helping the bereaved child. Finally there is a chapter on group work with stressed children.
Unfortunately the chapter on eating disorders is a little disappointing. The author argues that weight loss due to anorexia nervosa results in brain failure' and as a result cognitive abilities deteriorate in a very predictable sequence. The author presents a diagram of the sequence of anorexic brain failure' in which the ability to use abstract concepts is supposedly the ยฎrst to diminish, followed by a loss of ability to use mathematical concepts and culminating in a disruption in memory and disorientation in time and space. This seems to me to be a gross oversimpliยฎcation of the research with regard to the effects of anorexia nervosa. We do have evidence that there is cerebral atrophy in anorexia nervosa and that in many cases this is reversed with weight restoration. However, the precise role of the brain in terms of the development and maintenance of eating disorders is largely unclear and the effects of this deterioration are certainly not as neatly ordered or as predictable' as the author suggests. Many would also argue that some of the supposed effects of brain deterioration mentioned by the author, such as black-and-white thinking' are predisposing factors to the development of anorexia nervosa rather than the result of continued starvation. Very little attention is paid to the condition of bulimia nervosa, where it does not arise out of anorexia nervosa. In fact, the author says that the physical and psychological consequences outlined for anorexia nervosa are largely absent for bulimia nervosa. This has the effect, although I am sure that this was not the intention, of underestimating the very serious consequences of this condition.
On the whole, however, this is a very sensitive and carefully considered book. The authors are very aware of the difยฎculties that a teacher might face in dealing with the CCC 1072ยฑ4133/97/030214ยฑ02$17.50