When a Loved One Won't Seek Mental Health Treatment

“This book is a true contribution to guide the many significant others impacted by a family member’s mental health struggles in a practical and constructive way. Families are often the unintended casualty of recovery avoidance, and are typically left feeling helpless and hopeless. Pollard and his skilled interdisciplinary team provide a step-by-step plan to empower significant others to choose behaviors that promote family well-being without blame or judgement. Congratulations!”
—Barbara Van Noppen, PhD, LCSW, clinical professor in psychiatry and the behavioral sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California ~Barbara Van Noppen, PhD, LCSW

“Recovery avoiders do NOT want to stay disabled. But they disappoint, inconvenience, and control their families in self-defeating ways. This is a sophisticated, compassionate, realistic look at how to improve the whole family’s well-being. The authors describe gradually shifting from resentful accommodation and critical minimizing to incentivizing small, positive steps and refraining from unrealistic demands for change. Reducing the negative impact on the family ultimately opens the door to recovery.”
—Sally Winston, founder and executive director of ASDI, and coauthor (with Martin Seif) of Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts, Needing to Know for Sure,and Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety ~Sally Winston

“If you’ve pleaded, nagged, and threatened your loved one to seek help for their mental health condition but they never do, then When a Loved One Won’t Seek Mental Health Treatment is the book for you. It’s filled with thoughtful and effective strategies to decrease family distress, encourage your loved one to seek help, and, more importantly, to help you live fully even when your loved one will not.”
—Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP, codirector of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy, and coauthor of Digging Out ~Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP

“Pollard et al. have produced a family resource that explains the sufferer’s issues without judgmental labels like resistance, controlling, etc. They replace such terminology with thoughtfully descriptive labels (e.g., recovery-avoidant behavior) and, more importantly, provide the reader with understandable reasons for why these behaviors occur. Understanding isn’t a treatment program, but it is the foundation for any program that will be successful.”
—Jonathan B. Grayson, PhD, licensed psychologist; director of the Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety and OCD; and author of Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as well as over 400 articles and presentations ~Jonathan B. Grayson, PhD

“This timely book draws on the authors’ decades of experience working with families of people facing the most challenging behavioral health problems. It offers practical, step-by-step guidance on making changes that can help families be less controlled by their loved one’s problems—and live healthier lives. Vignettes bring the strategies to life. I enthusiastically recommend this volume as a self-help resource, as well as to practicing therapists.”
—Debra A. Hope, PhD, Aaron Douglas Professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and lead author of Managing Social Anxiety ~Debra A. Hope, PhD