SPEECH AFTER LONG SILENCE - THE USE OF NARRATIVE THERAPY IN A PREVENTIVE INTERVENTION FOR CHILDREN OF PARENTS WITH AFFECTIVE-DISORDER

This article is an attempt to explain why the stories of those who suf fer from affective disorder have gone unspoken, and to describe how th e Preventive Intervention Project (PIP) helps to elaborate a narrative process within families. The PIP is a short-term, psychoeducational i ntervention focused on enhancing family understanding of affective dis order, and on building resiliency in children. Detailed descriptions o f interventions with two families are used to demonstrate how the PIP works with parents and children: to move the narrative process from pr ivate to shared meaning. We discuss how cultural ''canons'' regarding affective illness reinforce a tendency to Keep that experience private . We then show how the PIP provides an, alternative, ''schematic base' ' of understanding that facilitates a family's ability to begin a dial ogue about their illness. We hope to demonstrate how this modernist, p sychoeducational framework can be integrated with a more open-ended po stmodern construction of meaning.