Family & Systemic Therapy provides effective help for people with an extraordinarily wide range of difficulties. The range covers childhood conditions such as conduct and mood disorders, eating disorders, and drug misuse; and in adults, couple difficulties and severe psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Throughout the life span, it is shown to be effective in treatment and management of depression and chronic physical illness, and the problems that can arise as families change their constitution or their way of life.
Family therapy and systemic practice supports the notion that family relationships form a key part of the emotional health of each member within that family. This type of therapy can help people who care for each other find ways to cope collaboratively with any distress, misunderstanding and pain that is affecting their relationships and putting a strain on the family unit.
Most forms of family therapy will borrow from other approaches, such a systems theory – an integrated approach that explores behaviour patterns and human experience of individuals as part of a group or family. Other models of family therapy are based on experiential, cognitive-behavioural or psychodynamic approaches. Ultimately though, they are all designed to help families and loved ones overcome problems affecting their relationships and develop a deeper sense of connection to one another. Models drawn on are:
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Structural therapy – Identifies and Re-Orders the organisation of the family system
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Strategic therapy – Looks at patterns of interactions between family members
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Systemic/Milan therapy – Focuses on belief systems
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Narrative Therapy – Restoring of dominant problem-saturated narrative, emphasis on context, separation of the problem from the person
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Transgenerational Therapy – Transgenerational transmission of unhelpful patterns of belief and behaviour.