Family Therapy

Family therapy is an approach to clinical practice that involves conceptualizing individual psychological problems and their treatment within a family context. The effectiveness of family therapy for child and adolescent clinical problems is supported by meta-analyses which show that family therapy is an effective intervention for a range of child and adolescent problems including externalizing behavior problems such as disruptive behavior and substance use disorders, internalizing behavior problems such as depression and anxiety, and eating disorders, and as a key element of multimodal treatment programs for psychosis. This chapter describes contemporary evidence-based family models for the treatment of these conditions and supporting evidence. The models include functional family therapy and multisystemic therapy for juvenile delinquency and adolescent disruptive behavior disorders, brief strategic family therapy and multidimensional family therapy for adolescent substance use disorders, attachment-based family therapy for depression, cognitive behavioral family therapy for anxiety, family-based therapy for eating disorders, and psychoeducational family therapy for psychosis.