AO1

• Family therapy aims to reduce the stress of living together as a family, with a schizophrenic mother. In particular, the levels of expressed emotion are lowered through improving the families’ beliefs and attitudes towards schizophrenia
• One of the main aims of family therapy is to educate the family on the symptoms of schizophrenia (psychoeducation) in order to help them to be more understanding of the patient’s behaviour.
• The other aims of family therapy are to reduce the conflict in the family by addressing anger within the family, to reduce the stress caused by caring for the schizophrenic person, to reduce the self-sacrifice by getting carers to consider and find ways to make time for their own needs, to improve communication by considering how to limit expressed emotion
• Family dysfunction can increase the risk of relapse of schizophrenic patients, so family therapies attempt to improve the home situation of the person with schizophrenia to reduce this risk.