Family therapy

• Family therapy is used to reduce expressed emotion within the family, for example guilt, anger and stress.

  It usually occurs in 10 sessions over 3 - 12 months depending on the severity of expressed emotion.
• Pharaoh et al identified strategies to improve functioning and reduce tension and conflict as reducing expressed emotion helps remove opportunities of relapse.

  They identified helping strategies:

  • psychoeducation
  • forming an alliance
  • maintaining reasonable expectations
  • setting appropriate limits
  • encouraging talk and explanation
• Psychoeducation helps individuals and families to understand the nature of the disorder and the treatment options so they can help the patient deal with schizophrenia.
• Forming an alliance brings in close relatives who care to provide a strong network of support for the individuals who have schizophrenia.
• Maintaining reasonable expectations and setting appropriate limits ensures that the patient is not overwhelmed by the situation and it makes for some degree of separation with certain triggers to prevent relapse.
• By encouraging the patient to talk and explain their feelings and emotions, the therapist can help them understand and see what may be the most helpful tactic for them personally.
• AO3

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  Research to support family therapy comes from McFarlane who found that it reduced relapse rates by 50 - 60 % especially when patients recognised their mental health declining.

  Pharaoh also found that when he conducted a meta analysis, family therapy increased medication compliance and reduced relapse and hospital admittance for 24m after therapy.

  This shows it is effective at reducing relapse in the long term which increases its validity.
• AO3

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  Pharaoh et al found increased medication compliance in their meta analysis, but found that the effectiveness of the therapy was more to do with the drugs.

  For example perhaps they were reaping the benefits of medication and not the therapy and therefore this lack causality.

  It leads to the the issue where you can’t definitively say the therapy improved functioning as it may have been the medication.
• AO3

  :)

  Research to support the therapy comes from Lobban and Barrowclough who found 60 % of studies reported positive impacts on at least one (coping, problem solving, family functioning and relationship quality).

  This suggests that the family climate improve ls which leads to better quality of care for the patient.

  Also it has positive economical implications as if the patients have the environment to develop employability skills then they can get a job and earn money, feeding into society and then preach about their success and spread the word as a positive role model of Sz.