ABSTRACT
Family psychoeducation is a clinical strategy for treating a bona fide disabling and chronic illness, which is best defined as a functional impairment of the brain (Weinberger, 1987). More specifically, psychoeducation is a method for training families and other natural social groups to create an interactional environment that compensates and may partially correct functional disability in one of its members. The development of this approach is a direct result of the long and tortuous search for an effective treatment for schizophrenia, a condition that continues to defy adequate, let alone simple, explanation and to evade widely varying attempts to negate its impact. While new applications of psychoeducation are being developed and tested, the focus of the most refined forms relate to schizophrenia. For that reason, the present chapter will deal primarily with theoretical issues and clinical techniques relevant to that disorder.
