Research in family medicine

Abstract

Lack of recognition of emotional and behavioral problems in individuals and their families by health care professionals constitutes a major gap in health and disease care. Lack of adequate training in the behavioral sciences for health professionals and workers has allowed unnecessarily high morbidity and unhappiness in families and its individual members in the USA and probably other countries of the world. Lack of Health professionals' ability to extract valid information from patients and family for creative problem solving is another variable blocking effective therapy. The development of family therapy is in its infancy. It is not part of the undergraduate curriculum in most medical schools of the USA. Patient compliance to therapy, long term outcomes of family therapy, the natural history of common but serious illnesses, the incidence of psychiatric, emotional, behavioral problems in family medicine have never been accurately determined. The most significant research that must be undertaken immediately is finding the most effective way of reeducating the general population, physicians and health care professionals to producing and documenting the necessary information for the solving of health and disease problems and needs of individual members and families.