Family Counseling

Family therapy views a person’s symptoms as taking place in the larger context of the family. Some special techniques of family therapy include:

• Genogram — A genogram is a family tree constructed by the therapist. It looks at past relationships and events and what impact these have on the person’s current emotional technique.
• Systemic Interpretation — Views depression as a symptom of a problem in the larger family.
• Communication Training — Dysfunctional communication patterns within the family are identified and corrected. People are taught how to listen, ask questions and respond non-defensively.

Family therapy takes cooperation and a willingness to participate on the part of all the family members. A single holdout or someone who “doesn’t see the point of it” could make family therapy a little less effective. Even if only a part of the family can attend, family therapy can be a very powerful therapeutic modality that can lead to more lasting and quicker changes than individual psychotherapy alone.