Family Therapy

Question 1

What is family therapy

Answer 1

A form of psychotherapy and treatment of schizophrenia by altering the communications system within family

Question 2

What are the main aims of family therapy?

Answer 2

• Improve positive and decrease negative forms of communication
• increase tolerance levels and decrease criticism levels between family members
• decrease feelings of guilt and responsibility for causing the illness among family members

Question 3

What is family therapy based on?

Answer 3

-It is based on the idea that family dysfunction can play a role in the development of schizophrenia

Therefore by altering the relationships, communication and reducing the levels of expressed emotions should help a schizophrenic recover.

-therefore treatments involve the whole family and not just the member with schizophrenia and the family becomes the patients support network.

Question 4

How does family therapy work?

Answer 4

• Psychoeducation: Help the patients family understand the disorder better In order to help them cope with the symptoms and to support the patient.
• it also helps relatives anticipate and solve problems even after the period of treatment is over
• it usually lasts 3-12 months with 10 sessions

Question 5

AO3 family therapy

Answer 5

• leff: family therapy compared to routine outpatient care
• Xiong: randomly allocated 63 Chinese schizophrenics to either standard drug care or standard drug care with family therapy.

Question 6

Outline leff research

Answer 6

Leff compared family therapy with routine outpatient care for schizophrenics with families with high expressed emotion, finding in the first nine months of treatment 50 percent of those receiving routine care relapsed compared to 8 percent who received family therapy. After two years 75% relapsed in the standard care group compared to 50% for the family therapy patients. This shows family therapy is very effective especially in the short term.

Question 7

Outline Xiong’s research

Answer 7

Xiong randomly allocated 63 Chinese schizophrenics to either standard drug care or standard drug care with family therapy. He found that after one year 61% of the standard care patients had relapsed, compared with 33% of the standard care with family therapy patients. This suggests family therapy forms an effective treatment when combined with antipsychotics.