A moderate common factors approach is proposed as a synthesis or middle path to integrate common and specific factors in evidence-based approaches to high-risk youth and families. The debate in family therapy between common and specific factors camps is reviewed and followed by suggestions from the literature for synthesis and creative flexibility…

This study explored the attitudes of 147 undergraduate social work majors to working with difficult families. Students indicated which problems (from a list of 42, including hot topics such as homosexuality, transgender issues, abortion, and substance abuse) they believed they would find most difficult to work with and provided information…

This article briefly outlines the neglect of families within previous UK policy documents relating to drugs and alcohol, and discusses the significant progress that has been made in focusing on the family over the past decade. Although substance misuse causes major problems for many family members, this was not even recognized across the Western…

Objective: Because family oriented patient care improves patient outcome and reduces family burden, clinical family skills of communication, assessment, alliance, and support are part of core competencies required of all residents. Teaching residents to "think family" as part of core competencies and to reach out to families requires change in the…

This paper explicates the implications of my research on conflict management for self improvement and for practitioners who work to improve the conflict management of others. I also note how my experiences with practitioners have informed my research.

Calls for a recognition of existential issues in family therapy. Notes the importance of "big questions" to families, reviews the roots of existential philosophy therapy, and offers an example of the usefulness of connecting existential thought to the family field by discussing differentiation/fusion from an existential perspective. (BH)

Describes case study in which family systems approach to treating childhood encopresis based on the hypothesis that problematic elements of the family system were contributing to the encopresis. Nuclear family members were included in a family counseling process that used strategic homework, predictions about family behavior, and restructuring…

We report a randomized trial of a revised Behavioral Family Systems Therapy for Diabetes (BFST-D) intervention. Families of 104 adolescents with diabetes were randomized to standard care (SC) or to 6 months of an educational support group (ES) or BFST-D. Family communication and problem-solving skills were assessed at 0, 6, 12, and 18 months by…

The author examines the three crises he feels family therapy has passed through in the last three decades, including the need to transcend its focus on schizophrenia and to deal with families differing widely in socioeconimic origin. The current challenge is the need for professionalization of the field. (Author)

Describes a variable color-coding system which has been added to the standard family genogram in which characteristics or issues associated with a particular presenting problem or for a particular family are arbitrarily assigned a color. Presents advantages of color-coding, followed by clinical examples. (Author/ABL)

Reviews Family Concept Assessment Method (FCAM), instrument designed to measure family concept, the sum of a person's values, attitudes, and feelings regarding his or her family. Discusses FCAM reliability, administration and scoring, and clinical utility. Concludes that at least two measures (family congruence and family satisfaction scores) may…

This synopsis of the outcome literature on marital and family treatment (MFT) drew three conclusions. First, intervening at the marital/family level with nonalcoholic family members can motivate an initial commitment to change in the alcoholic who is unwilling to seek help. Second, MFT alone, or with individual alcoholism treatment, produces…

This paper presents eight occasions illustrating the "when" the "how" and the "why" behind therapeutic intervention in family therapy. (Author)

Presents case report of the treatment of a bulimic young woman and her family to illustrate method for working with the family's interactions and the client's internal processes. Includes guidelines and caveats for use of the method, which conceptualizes both levels and systems similarly. (Author/NB)

Reviews early attempts to classify the field of family therapy, including Haley's caricatures, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry's classification, and others. The new paradigmatic model proposes a classification of the field of family therapy in terms of three therapeutic paradigms: the historical, the structure/process, and the…