Claudia Black, Ph. D. is the clinical architect and actively involved in the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows. She works with the executive director and clinical director and their team assessing and enhancing the quality of the program. She is frequently on site speaking with clients and family members. She serves as a Senior Fellow and has been a clinical consultant at The Meadows Treatment Center in Arizona since 1998.
Claudia Black’s seminal work with children impacted by substance abuse in the late 1970s created the foundation for the adult child movement. She has offered models of intervention and treatment related to family violence, multi-addictions, relapse, anger, depression and women’s issues. Dr. Black designs and presents training workshops and seminars to professional audiences in the field of family service, mental health, addiction and correctional services. She authors books and creates educational videos for use with the addicted client and families affected by addiction. Today Claudia is a renowned author and trainer internationally recognized for her pioneering and contemporary work with family systems and addictive disorders. She sits on the Advisory Board for the National Association of Children of Addiction, and the Advisory Committee for Camp Mariposa®, The Eluna Foundation’s national addiction prevention and mentoring program.
Claudia’ pioneering contributions are many:
She would be the first to name and coin the dysfunctional family rules, “Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel.”
She described the phenomena of delayed stress, emotional trauma, the child’s denial process, the phenomena of “looking good" kids as they relate to growing up with addiction, and hence the meaning and phraseology of “Adult Child of Alcoholics”.
She utilized art therapy in the context of group work with young children that offered a model for children’s programs for the past three plus decades.
She broke the barrier and openly discussed physical and sexual abuse in the context of addictive families.
Her work, her passion has been ageless and offers a foundation for those impacted by addiction to recover, and gives our professional field a library of both depth and breadth.
Dr. Black is the recipient of numerous national awards including the 2004 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Washington School of Social Work, the 2010 Conway Hunter Award for excellence in the field of addictions, the 2012 Robert Rehmar Addiction Professional Award, the 2014 Father Joseph C. Martin Professional Excellence Award, the NAADAC 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine 2021 Media Award.
Dr. Black has been a keynote speaker on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada. Her workshops have been presented to an extraordinarily wide array of audiences including military academies, prison systems, medical schools, and extensive mental health and addiction programs. Claudia has extensive multi-cultural experiences working with agencies and audiences in Japan, Brazil, Australia, Scotland, Iceland, Germany, England and Canada. Many of her books and videos have been translated and published abroad.
Claudia is the author of It Will Never Happen To Me, Changing Course, My Dad Loves Me, My Dad Has A Disease, Repeat After Me, Relapse Toolkit, A Hole in the Sidewalk, Depression Strategies, Straight Talk, Family Strategies, Anger Strategies, Deceived: Facing Sexual Betrayal, Lies and Secrets, The Truth Begins With You, Intimate Treason and her most recent book Unspoken Legacy. She has produced several audio CDs and over twenty DVDs. www.claudiablack.com
