17 - Family Therapy

Abstract

This chapter deals with the family therapy approach to the treatment of mental health problems. The idea that families might have a part in the genesis of psychiatric disorders is not new. Family therapy is a treatment approach that takes the family unit as its focus. Family therapists understand the emotional and behavioral problems of individuals as often being related to problems in the family systems of which they are part. They believe that by working to promote change in the family, the symptoms and problems of the family's members will be resolved, or at least ameliorated. An important feature of the family-therapy approach is an emphasis on the concept of circular, rather than linear causation. Family therapists are reluctant to regard events or behaviors in families as due to single, isolated causes, but tend to see them as parts of usually complex chains of events. Approaches have been, and continue to be, used by therapists in their efforts to promote change in families. As the field developed, most of the pioneers became identified with particular methods, and so ‘‘schools'’ of family therapy came to be identified. The main schools of family therapy include structural family therapy, approaches using communications theory, behavioral family therapy, and extended family systems therapy.