Medical Family Therapy in Integrated Primary Care: An Interactional Framework

Abstract

As the profession of Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) and the emerging field of Medical Family Therapy (MedFT) continue to grow and evolve within the current health-care system, integrated primary care (IPC) presents an environment that is advantageous for health professionals whose foundation of practice is collaborative, relational, and systemic. Although a plethora of literature exists detailing collaborative systems of health care, no single model of care exists that (a) provides a generalist approach that is neither disease nor population specific, (b) is applicable to all disease trajectories (i.e., decline, stabilization, and improvement), and (c) explicitly involves MedFT as the behavioral health providers within the in IPC system. In this chapter the authors present the Medical Family Therapy in Integrated Primary Care Framework (MedFT-IPCF), which is based on a systemic approach to health care that focuses on medical family therapists’ (MedFTs) role in health-care delivery. The MedFT-IPCF emerged from a qualitative research study whose aim was to explore and describe MedFTs’ role in an IPC setting, with a focus on their interpersonal interactions with medical providers and patients.