Examples Of Structural Family Therapy

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Structural family therapy theory and techniques can be found in many facets in therapy. Structural family therapy looks at the family’s systems and boundaries as a whole; as well as, each member’s systems and boundaries in the family. After identifying the systems and boundaries, structural mapping, techniques are used to help address a family’s problems. Techniques such as enactment, boundary making, and joining, are used to strengthen and develop healthy boundaries; as well as, end or weaken boundaries that may try to cause triangulation, negative coalitions, or negative boundaries that affect the family. Also how effective structural family therapy can be for different situations. One technique, enactment, involves family members to discuss …show more content…

Structural family therapy is used to see how the client’s boundaries within their family and the subsystems outside of the family. With the use of structural mapping, the process of developing and evaluating a family’s boundaries, and enactment the family therapist and family will work on eliciting changes in the family dynamic by encouraging family members to reflect on their own behaviors within the family dynamic (Fisher et al., 2010). When changing the family dynamics to be more encouraging, in this case about nutrition and eating healthy, it helps families find different results for the same …show more content…

This therapy is called brief strategic family therapy (BSFT). Not only does it look at systemic relationships within the family and boundary issues, but develops a treatment that is more problem-focused to address family issues (Szapocznik et al., 2012). BSFT works well with adolescent who have behavioral problems, substance abuse, associations with antisocial peers, and impaired family functioning. BSFT looks at a teenager’s boundaries, family structure, and creates changes in the boundaries by strategically intervening to alter the boundaries (Szapocznik et al., 2012). Overall, BSFT has been shown to have reduce substance abuse in teenagers, helped with conduct behavior problems, and is more likely to have family engagement to develop change (Szapocznik et al.,

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