Marriage and family therapy - programs guide online

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Marriage and family therapy is not just an programmed academic journey, but an emotional and even a spiritual one to be taken by a whole family.

The educational side of the journey is the first step on the road, but there are a variety of destinations which will be explored by the therapist with the help of family members.

In Britain you can expect family therapists to be drawn from disciplines like medicine, or social service oriented professions such as psychology, nursing, social work, or specialised counsellors. Many will have university qualifications. Specialist therapists concentrate on multicultural and cross cultural problems.

The purpose of marriage and family therapy is to treat problems within the family unit as a combined issue, and not one associated with the behavour or problem of any one family member, even if the problems may relate to one or more person in the family.

It sees the family as a single organism requiring its own level of psychological wellbeing and seeks to enhance and improve family relationship and the health of the family as a whole.

No specific issue can be isolated as a trigger for family therapy but very often medical conditions like schizophrenia, eating problems like bulemia or anorexia, or substance abuse by one or more family members may be involved or tensions between husband and wife, or two or more siblings.

Traumatic events within the family unit such as divorce, remarriage or problems with children may push a family into a melt-down which requires external intervention and the marriage and family therapist may represent an ambulance at such a time.

Unlike other forms of therapy family counselling will concentrate on meeting with members of the family unit as a group to examine failures in communication, the ways various members behave and react with others, and will try to get the family members themselves to come up with behavioural changes which will affect the atmosphere and the direction of the home. Naturally individual counselling may also be involved.

After investigation the Therapist may be able to identify problems that family members have not been able to eyeball themselves and encourage them to come up with solutions which work for individuals and the group without challenging the needs of any one person.

Family therapy is markedly different to some other psychological approaches to systemic failure in the family which may focus on clinical answers to individual problems or psychological theory. In its most simplistic form it is the science of helping family members to live wtih each other.

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