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By Mayo Clinic staffIn general, anyone who wants to improve troubled relationships can benefit from family therapy. You can use family therapy to address many specific issues, such as marital and financial problems, conflict between parents and children, and the effects of substance abuse and depression on the entire family.
Your family may pursue family therapy along with other types of mental health treatment, especially if one of you has a serious mental illness or chemical dependence that also requires intense individual therapy or rehabilitation treatment.
For example, family therapy can help family members cope if a relative has schizophrenia — but the person who has schizophrenia should continue with his or her individualized treatment plan, such as medication and possibly hospitalization. In the case of addiction, the family can attend family therapy while the person who has an addiction participates in residential treatment. Sometimes the family may participate in family therapy even if the addicted person hasn't sought out his or her own treatment.
- 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.
