Brief Family Interventions in Psychosis: A Collaborative, Resource-Oriented Approach to Working with Families and Wider Support Networks

Abstract

Family intervention (FI) is a generic term for a range of therapeutic approaches lo working with someone with psychosis and their family. Working with the significant others as well as the patient - in other words focusing on the relationships within which the patient's problem behaviors/symptoms are manifested - is known as a systemic intervention or therapy. All systemic practitioners work with as many as possible of the key people involved with the patient (and affected by the behaviors). In some cases, this is the partner/spouse and in others the immediate family, wider family, or support network. The field therefore includes couple, family, and network approaches, and in this chapter, the author refers to both "systemic" and "family/network" approaches to denote this range of approaches which all focus on relationships.' Even in a brief systemic intervention, the family/network members attending therapeutic sessions will often vary from one session to the next. Ideally this will be decided by the family and therapist on a session-by-session basis to enable particular topics to be addressed, but sometimes the attendance at a family meeting is determined by practical issues such as availability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)