Family Intervention M4 written

First view the following video entitled – Integrative Family Therapy (2 hours in length, psychotherapy.net, interactive transcription). You will want to make notes as these will be helpful to writing your paper.

Be sure to cite your sources in the paper using APA style by drawing from the content guides, text chapters, videos from Modules 2, 3 and 4, and external sources.

In your paper be sure to address all steps listed:

Identify and discuss at least 3 ( up to 5) models you believe would be most useful for you to learn and use. Explain why these models fit best with your own style?
Discuss how you would go about learning these chosen models in adequate depth, and integrate different models effectively?
From each of your chosen models, identify the specific methods of intervention would you be most likely to use?
How would you avoid simply learning a bunch of techniques while lacking in deep understanding for how and when to use the intervention methods? How would you ensure you had a sound understanding of the theory/principles of each model and the interventions?
Select 3 or more diverse families considering differences such as nationality, religion, socio-economic status, culture, ethnicity, race, gender, blended families, etc. Then discuss how these models might be effective?
Which of the 8 models explored in the course might not be as effective with these diverse families? Explain your reasoning using the text and external sources.
Summarize your main points and be sure to list references in APA style.

ANSWER

Integrative Family Therapy Models

Introduction

Integrative family therapy entails selecting techniques from varying therapeutic orientations best suited to a client-specific problem. By tailoring the treatment to an individual, the therapists believe they will offer the most significant effects. Unlike single approaches, integrative therapy is not constrained to a specific school of thought or methodology (Lebow, 2019). Instead, it allows the therapists to draw from different methods as they are required. Some of the most valuable models to learn and use include structural, trans-generational, strategic, cognitive-behavioral, experiential, and social construction models.

Integrative Family Therapy Models

The Trans-generational Model

The trans-generational model focus on the influences of the historical perspectives of the family issues through attending to the relational patterns of the family over the decades. The transactional model advocates argue that the family patterns are linked to the unresolved issues in the family’s origin. This does not mean that the unsettled problems lead to the issues, but they argue that the situation keeps repeating across different generations (Goldenberg and Goldenberg, 2012). Ideally, the way the current family relates, resolves problems deals with power, and manages intimacy. Trans-generational model is effective in family therapy since it permits the therapist to gain vital data about significant aspects of family life and history, which offer a blueprint of the changes needed to present the dysfunctional interactions. The trans-generational model allows the therapists to scrutinize the interactions of clients with different generations to understand and expound on the current problems within the family and predict forthcoming difficulties. For instance, understanding how the family has responded to the past crises can offer an insight into the everyday struggles and the generational reactions to stressful circumstances.

The experiential model

An experiential model is an approach to family therapy that focuses on the family problem through role-playing, use of activities, expressive arts, guided imagery, and other active involvements of the family. The experiential model focuses on the action, which is vital since the persons involved are bodily engaged, thus having access to psychological elements they would not have accessed (Goldenberg and Goldenberg, 2012). The experiential model allows the therapists to tailor their technique to every family’s unique behavior and conflict patterns. The experiential model aims to enable the clients to experience particular emotions or moments that allow them to process their thoughts and emotions more healthily.

The Structural Model

The structural model focuses on the concepts of the structural approach in family therapy, which may include the family roles, family rules, boundaries, subsystems, coalitions, organization, and wholeness. The uniqueness of the structural model of family therapy is that it relies on the organizational and spatial metaphors both in identifying and describing the problems and solutions. One needs to understand several critical areas while using the structural model. These include boundaries, hierarchy, power distribution, subsystems, coalition, alliance, and disengagement within the family dynamics. The structural model believes that the individual signs of the problem are rooted in the setting of family patterns, and the family structure or organization must change before relieving the symptoms.

The primary function of the model is to facilitate organizational changes within a dysfunctional family, assuming that all the parties’ behavioral symptoms and changes will follow the family’s transaction changes (Lebow, 2019). The structural model effectively establishes healthy boundaries, which help an individual to change to the demands and improve communication, which helps in addressing the problem in a functional or dysfunctional family.

Strategic Model

The strategic model entails straightforward therapeutic approaches to eliminate and lower the family’s behavioral symptoms or problems. The strategic model is less focused on the meaning of the origins or symptoms but offers a series of tasks or directives to the family (Goldenberg and Goldenberg, 2012). The strategic model aims at changing the repetitive interactive series that lead to trans-generational conflict, sometimes without family members’ cooperation or manipulation of their awareness. Two benefits of the strategic model are the insistent attention to eliminating the dysfunctional behavioral sequence or disturbing symptom through continuously tracking the patterns of the family and interpersonal exchanges and the use of tasks to accomplish therapeutic goals. The strategic model focuses on reducing the risk factors that lead to behavioral issues and changing cognitive behaviors. The benefit of using a strategic model is that it’s an active form of family therapy designed to replicate family conversations and interactions to resolve problems that lead to behavioral change. For instance, it changes the structural interaction patterns that address the family interactions and behaviors that led to the problem. This approach leads to the family functioning better and overcoming the issues they are encountering.

The Social Construction Model

The social construction model focuses on the subjective perceptions of the reality of truth that every client presents. This is different from the individualist tradition, where meaning, motivation, rationality, and all that is taken as persons’ qualities are assumed to be situated within the person, and social construction considers these qualities as human interaction byproducts. Social construction entails accepted reality and mutual understanding, making interaction a significant aspect of the therapy (Hanna, 2018). This invites systemic therapists to realign the many conventional ideas of family therapy and focus on a more collaborative and less technological approach to clients.

Learning the Family Therapy Models

Research in family therapy models is a factor of the diverse approaches. Many therapists have believed it’s more difficult to stick with a single technique while working with families than when treating clients. Therapists must examine and respond to each family member and the entire family system. Theoretical knowledge and therapeutic know-how are major variables in combination with awareness of evidence-based study findings that are effective in gaining an understanding of different family therapy models. To integrate family therapy approaches, one must have a broad knowledge of various approaches to family therapy. This involves reading more than one book to get in-depth and adequate knowledge about the different integrative approaches. Extrapolating from various theories and attempting to bring them together creates a holistic theory that requires one to know something about the different theories one borrows from. Research the models, evidence-based practice, and examinations for couples and family therapy.

Specific Methods of Intervention

Family systems therapy occurs in stages and adopts an objective and neutral role where the therapist tries to assess the family’s emotional system in the past and present through a series of measurement techniques and evaluation interviews. Symbolic experiential family therapy focuses on a multigenerational approach to address family and individual, relational patterns. The main aim of the therapy is to increase personal growth through feelings, emotions, and the symbolic world. Emotionally focused therapy focuses on improving bonding and attachment in adult connections. Brig family therapy is a step-by-step, non-historical and pragmatic approach based on the idea that most human problems develop through mishandling normal challenges in life. In this case, the attempted resolutions become the problem of the family. Structural family therapy focuses on the influence of social factors in the functioning of the family and working within the larger community systems. Narrative Therapy focuses on the storytelling approaches, which help clients understand themselves and find meaning (Ong, Barnes, and Buus, 2020). The main aim of the narrative model is to separate the client from the problem, thus allowing them to externalize their problems rather than internalize them. Through the narrative model, a family member can find their voice and rely on it for good, enabling them to turn into experts in their own matters and in ways that reflect their values and goals.

Considerably, family therapy aims at treating the family unit to ensure effective communication, dynamics, and relations within the family to create a healthy and harmonious home life. Reflecting on the important issues and the recurring incidents in families will help prevent learning a bunch of techniques since understanding the key themes of family therapy will help focus on specific intervention methods. A sound understanding of the theory and principles of evidence-based practice, case studies, and clinical notes reflecting certain scenarios and the use of a certain intervention will increase knowledge and use of specific interventions.

Diverse Families and Therapy Models

Structural family therapy is the most effective family therapy for a single-parent family. Structural family therapy focuses on the organizational patterns and the generational boundaries that provide a framework and clinical model that strengthens and defines the family structure. Behavioral therapy is the most effective therapy in the foster family since it improves the child-parent relationship, reducing problem behaviors (He, Fisher, Swanson, and Lebow, 2022). Emotionally focused is very significant to the needs of blended families since it focuses on the emotional experiences and relational bonds. One of the major issues with blended families is that they have to develop healthy and strong bonds, which requires learning each other’s unique emotional experiences and ways of approaching life.

Ineffective Model

The psychodynamic model might not be as effective with the diverse families since it emphasizes unconscious conflict, insight, actual relationships, and effect on inner experience. The psychodynamic model heavily relies on the therapist’s interpretation, which can be rejected by the client or may simply be inaccurate. Additionally, it does not account for an individual’s ability to control behavior or think.

Conclusion

Integrative family therapy models are treatment approaches that entail selecting techniques from varying therapeutic orientations that are most suitable for the client’s specific problem. Tailoring a therapy model to a family problem helps produce significant effects of the therapy. Some common family therapy models include structural, cultural, trans-generational, experiential, and social-construction models. Specific interventions from these models are used for therapeutic interventions among diverse families depending on the necessity and suitability of the intervention.

References

Goldenberg, H., & Goldenberg, I. (2012). Family therapy: An overview.

Hanna, S. M. (2018). The practice of family therapy: Key elements across models. Routledge.

He, Y., Fisher, A. R., Swanson, S. E., & Lebow, J. L. (2022). Integrative Systemic Therapy: Integrating Individual, Couple, and Family Therapy. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 43(1), 9-21.

Lebow, J. L. (2019). Current issues in the practice of integrative couple and family therapy. Family Process, 58(3), 610-628.

Ong, B., Barnes, S., & Buus, N. (2020). Conversation analysis and family therapy: A narrative review. Journal of Family Therapy, 42(2), 169-203.