You may have heard of family therapy, but do you know how it can help someone recovering from a mental health condition? Family therapy is a powerful complement to individual therapy by providing support, education and guidance to you and your family. And it’s not about blaming and shaming while everyone argues.
Family therapy helps improve relationships and communication, resolve family conflicts, and enhance the overall functioning of your family as a system. It does this by bringing some or all family members together to explore unhelpful patterns and dynamics and create new ways of functioning to support your recovery.
Read on to learn more about the benefits, how it works, and types of therapy.
How Can Family Therapy Benefit Family Members?
Sometimes a family member will question why they should participate, or even why would family members come together to do this work at all? Here are some of the main reasons.
Improved Communication
By developing a broader range of communication skills, family therapy provides a common language for family members that can help reduce conflict and open up new ways of relating.
Enhanced Understanding
With improved communication comes an improved ability to understand each other with greater empathy.
Healthy Boundaries
Through education about how families function as systems, family members learn how to construct healthy boundaries within the family.
Conflict Resolution
In family therapy, members are helped to address dysfunctional interactions and learn ways to recognize and change unhealthy patterns of problem-solving.
Strengthened Bonds
New or more meaningful connections between family members can be created.
Coping Skills
Family therapy cultivates and develops enhanced coping skills to work through issues together.
Support During Transitions
Through difficult times such as a mental health crisis, moving, aging, death, or grief— family therapy can help families find a way through challenges together
How Family Therapy Works
While family therapy is often brief and solution-focused, with an average of 12 sessions, it may be longer, depending on the therapy approach used. A counselor, usually a trained Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LFMT) guides the process using various approaches and techniques.
The therapist plays the role of neutral guide, helping family members uncover unspoken dynamics, communication patterns, and behavioral dynamics that impact the family as a whole. Through this process, family members can significantly improve their functioning as a unit and develop effective ways to handle conflicts and problem-solve in a more constructive manner.
Typical Family Therapy Process
While there are many types of therapy, each with its own methods, most follow this general process:
- Assessment: The therapist observes family interactions and identifies the dynamics between members to understand strengths, weaknesses, and issues.
- Goal Setting: Together with members, the therapist defines achievable goals
- Intervention: The therapist uses a variety of therapeutic techniques to help members achieve their goals.
- Evaluation: The therapist and members assess progress made and adjust the therapy as needed.
- Closure: Once goals have progressed well or been achieved, the sessions are concluded, although follow-up can be arranged to check-in and adjust progress and goals as needed.
What Issues Can Family Therapy Help With?
There is a wide range of issues that family therapy can assist with if a family member has a mental health condition, including.
- Mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder
- Anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Eating disorders such as anorexia
- Personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder (BPD)
- Schizophrenia
- Substance use disorder
In addition, family therapy can help with a number of other issues such as tension between family members, stress, anger, trauma, and coping with acute illness among others.
Types of Family Therapy
Structural Family Therapy (SFT)
With its focus on improving family interactions and relationships, SFT examines and reorganizes the family structure. It emphasizes clear boundaries, healthy hierarchies, and functional communication patterns within the family system.
It is effective for addressing dysfunctional family relationships, troubled adolescents, and families dealing with mental health issues or significant life changes.
Therapists use techniques like family mapping to visualize and modify family dynamics. As a here-and-now approach, SFT empowers parents within the family hierarchy and aims to reduce unhelpful patterns like detouring or triangulation.
One study of the effectiveness of structural-strategic family therapy for adults with mental health issues found [1]:
- For the parents, higher family cohesion, increased satisfaction and perceived efficacy, as well as healthier parenting practices after treatment.
- For the young adults living with the family, there were less internalizing (such as anxiety and depression) and externalizing (such as aggressive acting-out) problems after treatment.
Systemic Family Therapy
In this approach, the family is viewed as a system where individual behavior is influenced by important relationships. The focus is on understanding and modifying relational contexts, rules, boundaries, and communication patterns within the family. Issues that systemic therapy can address include depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders.
With the family, therapists work to observe dynamics, encourage expressions of feelings and perspectives, and develop new ways of interacting. Therapists use techniques such as joining, strength orientation, and solution-focused interventions.
A study comparing 30 randomized controlled trials evaluated the efficacy of systemic therapy for adults with depressive disorders. Systemic interventions showed larger improvements in depressive symptoms compared to those who had no treatment [2].
Systemic therapy is particularly effective for adult patients in a variety of treatments [3].
Bowen Family Systems Therapy
As a versatile approach, this can be applied to couples, families, and partners struggling with relationship issues. The focus is on analyzing intergenerational relationships to assess differentiation—the balance between autonomy and interdependence in significant relationships.
Using genograms—visual representations of multiple family generations, the therapist identifies emotional patterns and inherited communication styles.
This helps family members to understand how past generations influence current behaviors and relationships. This allows members to break unhealthy cycles and improve family functioning. It’s particularly useful for addressing long-standing family issues and improving overall family dynamics.
One study found that Bowenian family therapy can increase empathy and happiness in couples by improving understanding and communication skills [4]
Key Takeaways
- Family therapy can change the way family members communicate, including how they engage in arguments and express support.
- As part of the therapy process, it’s important to focus on personal growth and self-reflection.
- The goal is to help family members work through problems together and develop solutions that can be applied outside of therapy sessions.
Through participation in family therapy, you and your loved ones can gain valuable tools for improving relationships, enhancing communication, and fostering a more supportive and understanding family environment.
Improving Mental Health in Utah
Treatment and transitional living is available in Utah. Are you or a loved one looking for a compassionate space to heal from trauma or PTSD, other mental health conditions, or addictions? Our licensed trauma-informed professional therapists and counselors at Corner Canyon Health Centers can provide compassionate help using a range of therapeutic and holistic techniques.
Reach out to our Admissions team now at Corner Canyon. We’re in a peaceful setting bordered by the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.bordered by the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.
Sources
[1] Jiménez L, Hidalgo V, Baena S, León A, Lorence B. 2019. Effectiveness of Structural⁻Strategic Family Therapy in the Treatment of Adolescents with Mental Health Problems and Their Families. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Apr 8;16(7):1255.
[2] Vossler A, Pinquart M, Forbat L, Stratton P. 2024. Efficacy of systemic therapy on adults with depressive disorders: A meta-analysis. Psychother Res. 2024 May 22:1-17.
[3] Stratton P. The Evidence Base of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
[4] Amini, O., & Naser Shariati, M. A. (2021). The effectiveness of Bowen’s style family therapy on increasing the happiness and empathy marital of couples referring to Isfahan Counseling Center. Journal of Human Relations Studies, 1(3), 23–31.
