Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy最新文献

The discovery of one's professional and personal epistemology is a crucial component of reflexive practice. The following autoethnography focuses on the development of the author's personal epistemology while completing a three-year Master of Counselling degree. Having worked within the medical model for a decade, the author struggled with choosing between modernism and post-modernism as a personal epistemology while practicing in a counselling and family therapy clinic that privileged post-structural and social constructionist epistemologies. This paper examines that struggle. Data were drawn from journal entries documenting reflections, conversations with supervisors and student colleagues, vignettes from sessions, and current research into the development of epistemological positions. Ultimately, the author concludes that it is not modernism versus post-modernism, but rather the two epistemologies, shaped by personal and professional experiences, that work together to facilitate intentional practice. The importance of examining a personal epistemology has implications for students, educators, supervisors, and practicing professionals.

A shift from orientationism (being committed to a particular therapy approach) to integrationism offers the prospect of a more collaborative, curious, and respectful community of practitioners. Yet our current ways of articulating integrative practice can inadvertently undermine this ambition, and result in confusion or ambiguity about exactly what is being integrated, when, how, and why. Some personal and professional reflections are used to situate this dilemma and to suggest the need to expand our vocabulary for practice. Can we avoid an either/or binary between orientationism and integrationism and find ways to get the best of both worlds? This might involve finding concepts that enable practitioners to maintain a primary therapeutic orientation while integrating, as well as ways to articulate our integrative frameworks that respect both an individual practitioner's unique style and the therapeutic traditions they draw upon. Concepts from both integrationism and pluralism are used to develop these themes and to offer some possible alternatives.

Suicidality is a major global public health issue that couple and family therapists will inevitably encounter in their clinical work. While relational therapies for addressing suicidality are growing, few specifically outline ways to address the influence of systemic oppression on suicidality, reflecting the push to de-politicise suicide research. To address this issue, scholars have proposed integrating narrative approaches with evidence-based practices. This paper therefore delineates the integration of narrative therapy with dialectical behaviour therapy as a material discursive therapy. All main aspects of theory integration are described, including the epistemological framework, approach to the therapeutic relationship, and interventions. Finally, the change process is described using clinical case examples throughout to illustrate the ways in which these models can be integrated to produce a critical, relational approach for addressing suicidality in family therapy.

Couple and family therapy is distinguished from individual therapy due to its focus on the interactional patterns between family members. However, there is plenty of overlap because of the reciprocal relationship between individual psychopathology and its relational contexts. Many clients seeking individual therapy aim to improve their relationships, and couples and families who have relational difficulties often have at least one partner with some type of psychopathology. This article presents integrative systemic therapy (IST) as a method for integrating individual, couple, and family therapy. IST is a multitheoretical and multisystemic perspective that utilises concepts and interventions from a variety of therapies for a broad variety of presenting concerns and populations, including individuals, couples, and families. In IST, a repetitive pattern of interaction is co-occurring at two levels – within an individuals' minds (i.e., intrapsychic) and externally in people's interactions with others in their system (i.e., interpersonal) – and they influence each other. Therefore, IST therapists utilise various interventions from individual and couple and family therapy within a case to disentangle problems occurring at various systemic levels. The paper begins with a summary of the theoretical assumptions of IST and introduces basic terms such as sequences. This is followed by specific descriptions of two critical tools, essence and blueprint, which walk therapists through the steps of how to conduct IST and integrate individual, couple, and family therapy. Finally, two case examples are used to demonstrate this process.

Over the last three decades, family therapy/counselling in South Korea has expanded significantly in both public and private sectors and this paper overviews its development and the status of public infrastructure. Since the establishment of the Korean Association of Family Therapy in 1988, family counselling has developed as a distinct professional area but was mainly carried out in the private sector until the mid-2000s. In 2005, the Healthy Family Act was legislated, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family was established, and approximately 250 public family support centers (FSCs) are currently in operation with a key responsibility for family counselling. FSCs provide diverse services such as couple and family counselling, family group counselling, family helpline, and divorce counselling with an estimated 73,392 users in 2018 (KIHF, 2019). Furthermore, 63 FSCs are accredited as institutes for divorce counselling where various forms of service for divorcing families are provided. Although South Korea has one of the most advanced public systems for a family counselling service in Asia, some issues need to be resolved for its sustainable development including counsellor qualifications, appropriate fees, and the balance between public and private services.

This paper discusses major cultural differences and corresponding teaching strategies when training student therapists in Taiwan about the concepts of self-of-the-therapist and self-awareness in marriage and family therapy. The authors present their years of teaching experience and observations about these cultural differences as well as a class example to address these differences. Specifically, a detailed summary of a master’s level course titled ‘Self-Development for Helping Professionals’ will be illustrated.

Using the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response Model as the guiding theoretical framework, this hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of individuals and families adapting to life with chronic heart failure (CHF). We analysed 17 interviews with either individuals or families from a medical centre in a metropolitan city in Taiwan. The processes of adaptation involved families’ efforts to reduce or manage demands by utilising their existing capabilities, to strengthen and expand coping strategies, and to change meanings that shaped how they responded to their situations. The findings demonstrate the roles of family capabilities and family meanings in the process of a family living with CHF.

Based on a dataset, this paper examines the link between children’s presenting problems and interparental relationships. The clinical discussion focuses specifically on the impact of parental relationship on mental illness. Using a protocol to measure both the physiological and verbal responses of the patients, it is observed that regardless of the psychiatric diagnoses given to these children or young adults, almost all of them were deeply involved in their parents’ unresolved relational conflict. In the five case scenarios provided for illustration, the patients could articulate very clearly how concerned they were when they sensed their parent's relationship was at risk, and how their symptoms had served a function in maintaining the family equilibrium. Based on this clinical observation, it is important to develop a treatment approach that addresses mental illness in the family context.

This paper reviews the clinical utility of family-based treatment, comprised of multiple family therapy (MFT) and structural family therapy (SFT), in helping Hong Kong Chinese families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The author identifies the psychosocial service needs of these families and examines the contributions of the adapted MFT and SFT in responding to the psychosocial service needs of these families. Critical issues for clinical practice and research are discussed.