Do you believe your family could benefit from trying family therapy? Many families can be helped with access to the support of family therapy. Even if a family is not experiencing extreme circumstances, chances are they could stand to improve their communication or discuss things that they have been avoiding. And for someone born into a dysfunctional family, family therapy can help even more. In the past, they may also not be able to connect with others. Dealing with these dysfunctions can only improve your and your family members’ lives.
Everyone starts life with a family, whether it’s composed of blood relatives, adopted guardians, a close-knit neighborhood, or placement in foster care. A sense of family-whether positive or negative-influences every aspect of someone’s life, affecting identity and life goals. People learn vocabulary, habits, customs, rituals, and how to view and observe the world from their families. People also learn how to love and how to interact with others from these first relationships. Family therapy can help teens learn to develop healthier relationships and boundaries. Contact Foothills at Red Oak Recovery by calling 866.300.5275 to learn how family therapy can help your teen.
What Is Functional Family Therapy?
Functional family therapy (FFT) is a family-based program that addresses complex and multidimensional problems through clinical practice. This treatment is culturally sensitive and flexibly structured. Furthermore, it concentrates on lowering risk factors and raising protective factors that directly affect teens, with a particular emphasis on familial factors.
The program is most effective for adolescents at risk for delinquency, violence, substance use, or other behavioral problems, such as oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) or conduct disorder.
What Are the Techniques of Functional Family Therapy (FFT)?
Functional family therapy, or FFT, consists of at least 12 one-hour sessions and up to 30 one-hour sessions, depending on the complexity of the family situation. Sessions can be conducted in clinical settings as outpatient therapy or conducted at clients’ homes. FFT integrates many elements, such as clinical theory and evidence-based approaches, into a comprehensive model. The model has five specific phases:
- Engagement: Therapists concentrate on establishing and maintaining a strengths-based relationship with clients during this phase. The goal is to demonstrate to clients that therapists will listen to, help, and respect them.
- Motivation: Therapists then concentrate on the relationship process between adolescents and their families. The goal is to create a context that allows the family to see the benefits of FFT.
- Relational assessment: This involves analyzing the relational processes of the family. The emphasis shifts from an individual problem to a relational perspective. Therapists work on family values, interaction patterns, and sources of resistance.
- Behavior change: This phase aims to reduce and eliminate the problem behaviors and accompanying family relational patterns through individualized behavior change interventions.
- Generalization: In this last phase, therapists work on increasing the family’s capacity to adequately use multisystemic community resources and to engage in relapse prevention.
What Should Clients Expect from Family Therapy Programs?
Family therapy or family counseling is a form of treatment that addresses specific issues affecting the health and functioning of a family unit. It can use cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, or other types of individual therapy. It can effectively get a family through a significant transition, a difficult period, or the development of mental health problems in family members.
This type of therapy views someone’s problems in the context of the larger unit of the family. Family therapy assumes that concerns cannot be successfully addressed or solved without understanding the dynamics of the group. The way the family operates influences how the client’s problems have formed and how they are encouraged or enabled by other family members.
In family therapy or counseling, the term family does not necessarily only mean blood relatives. Family is anyone who plays a long-term supportive role in the client’s life. This is also commonly referred to as someone’s chosen family.
Involve the Family in Treatment at Foothills at Red Oak Recovery
At Foothills at Red Oak Recovery, we offer an adolescent substance use treatment center. Family therapy is one notable treatment option we provide. Call 866.300.5275 or contact us online and ask about our programs and services.
