Family therapy

• What is family therapy?

  • Takes place with families aiming to improve the quality of communication and interaction between family members
  • Involves the identified patient, which is a term used to describe one member of a dysfunctional family who expresses the family's conflicts
• How does family therapy help?

  • Reduces levels of expressed negative emotions such as anger and guilt that create stress, which is important as it will help reduce the likelihood of relapse
  • Improving families beliefs and behaviours towards schizophrenia with strategies like conflict resolution skills, maintaining boundaries, etc. Will aim to ensure family members balance care for the patient and maintaining their own lives
• What is a model of family therapy practice?

  • Burbach (2018)'s model begins with sharing basic information and providing emotional and practical support
  • Phase 2 involves identifying resources and what different family members can or can't offer
  • Phase 3 aims to encourage mutual understanding and creating a safe space for all members to express their feelings
  • Phase 4 involves identifying unhelpful patterns of interaction
  • The remaining few phases are about skills training, relapse prevention planning, and maintenance for the future
• What is one strength of family therapy?

  • Research support for effectiveness: McFarlane's (2016) review of studies concluded that family therapy is one of the most consistently effective treatments, due to reducing relapse rates by 50-60%
  • Also concluded that using it when mental health initially starts to decline is promising
  • Suggests family therapy is likely to be of benefit for people with both acute and 'full-blown' schizophrenia
• What is another strength of family therapy?

  • Benefits whole family: Lobban et al. (2016) analysed 50 family therapy studies which involved extra help just to support relatives, and found that 60% reported significantly positive impacts on family function and quality of relationships
  • Shows overall positive effects of family therapy additional to being effective for schizophrenia
• What is one limitation of family therapy?

  • Evidence for ineffectiveness: Garety et al. (2008) compared patients who had family therapy to patients who had carers but no therapy and found NO significant differences
  • However, carers displayed low rates of expressed emotion, which reflect widespread cultural changes in knowledge and attitudes towards schizophrenia despite limiting the supposed effectiveness of family therapy