Family Therapy

• What is family therapy?

  • A range of interventions aimed at the family (e.g. parents, siblings, partners) of someone with SZ
  • it should also involve the person with SZ if practical.
• How may family therapy help SZ sufferers?


  · Forming a therapeutic alliance with family members

  · Reducing the stress of caring for a relative with SZ

  · Improving the ability of the family to anticipate and solve problems

  · Reduction of anger and guilt in family members

  · Helping family members achieve a balance between caring for the individual with schizophrenia and maintaining their own lives

  · Improving families’ beliefs about SZ and behaviour towards it

  · Reduces chance of relapse
• Research evidence to support efficacy of family therapy (AO3)

  • Pharoah et al. (2010) reviewed the evidence for the effectiveness of family therapy (compared to antipsychotics alone)
  • FOUND: reduction in the risk of relapse and a reduction in hospital readmission during treatment and in the 24 months after
  • Strength as family therapy could be an alternative treatment for patients who cannot take antipsychotics or wouldn’t want to risk the side effects that come with taking them
  • important as family therapy can have a more positive impact on sufferers without the use of invasive treatment, helping improve symptoms and overall QOL.
• Strength of family therapy aims

  • Family therapy only aims to make schizophrenia more manageable and improve the patients’ quality of life
  • It helps by reducing the stress of living with schizophrenia in a family, both for the patient themselves and other family members
  • Strength as many schizophrenia patients can benefit from decreased symptoms and stress experienced which allows them to function less abnormally
  • May be beneficial as a treatment for making sufferer’s lives easier
  • However, family therapy is not necessarily a ‘cure’ for schizophrenia and simply helps with the aspect of living with it, therefore is not necessarily as effective as other treatments
• Limitation of family therapy (AO3)

  • Pharoah suggests that the main reason for family therapy’s effectiveness may have less to do with any improvements in functioning, and more to do with the fact that it increases medication compliance
  • Family therapy may not be a treatment for schizophrenia but more of a therapy to prepare sufferers to be treated through medication
  • may therefore suggest family therapy isn’t a valid form of therapy and is not as effective as previously suggested
• Strength- economic benefits (AO3)

  • Family therapy has considerable economic benefits
  • It is associated with significant cost savings when offered to people with schizophrenia in addition to standard care
  • The extra cost of family therapy is offset by a reduction in costs of hospitalisation because of the lower relapse rates associated with family therapy
  • There is also evidence that family therapy reduces relapse rates for a significant period after completion of the intervention
  • This means that the cost savings would be even higher
  • Therefore benefits the economy and sufferers