In this chapter we discuss the role of family work in interventions with young people with bipolar disorder. We recognize that family work is a specialized area and highly recommend Miklowitz's (2008) Bipolar Disorder: A Family-Focused Treatment Approach (second edition) and Miklowitz and Goldstein's (1997) Bipolar Disorder: A Family-Focused Treatment Approach, which have heavily influenced our intervention. We also acknowledge that some of the family therapy literature describes highly detailed interventions, particularly for communication skills and problem-solving (e.g. Mueser & Glynn, 1999). However, as with the rest of this manual, we place a strong emphasis on “real world” work and the following describes interventions that we have found effective when working with our population.

While for simplicity we have included this as a separate chapter, we suggest that in clinical work, the components described and the philosophy outlined should be interwoven throughout the intervention rather than being provided as a discrete module.

The rationale behind family work

There are a number of reasons for including family and relationship work in a psychological intervention for young people in the early phase of bipolar disorder. Firstly, in our population of young people aged between 15 and 25 years, almost 56% were living with their families, or had returned to the care of their families after developing their first episode (Hasty et al., 2006).