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By Mayo Clinic staffFamily therapy typically brings entire families together for therapy sessions. However, family members may also see a family therapist individually.
Working with a therapist, you'll examine your family's ability to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions. You may explore family roles, rules and behavior patterns in order to identify issues that contribute to conflict — as well as ways to work through these issues. Family therapy may help you identify your family's strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as difficulty confiding in one another.
Family therapy is often short term — typically less than six months. The specific treatment plan will depend on your family's situation.
For example, say that your adult son has depression. Your family doesn't understand his depression or how best to offer support. Although you're worried about your son's health, you have such profound family conflicts that conversations ultimately erupt into arguments. You're left with hurt feelings, communication diminishes, decisions go unmade, and the rift grows wider.
In such a situation, family therapy can help you pinpoint your specific concerns and assess how your family is handling them. Guided by your therapist, you'll learn new ways to interact and overcome unhealthy patterns of relating to each other. You may set individual and family goals and work on ways to achieve them. In the end, your son may be better equipped to cope with his depression, and the entire family may achieve a sense of understanding and togetherness.
- FAQ's on MFT's. American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. http://www.aamft.org/faqs/index_nm.asp. Accessed June 23, 2009.
- Marriage and family therapists: The family-friendly mental health professionals. American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. http://www.aamft.org/Press_Room/MFT%20Brochure%207-03.htm. Accessed June 23, 2009.
- Gurman AS, et al. Family therapy and couple therapy. In: Sadock BJ, et al. Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. 8th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2005:2584.
- Psychotherapies. National Institute of Mental Health. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies/index.shtml. Accessed June 23, 2009.
- Jager MW (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Aug. 4, 2009.
