Content and context: working with mentally ill people in family therapy

This article addresses the family's experience of caring for a mentally ill family member in the home. The focus is on how the family manages overt psychotic symptoms and the resulting interpersonal stresses. A model of intervention is proposed that allows therapists and families to examine the content and context of the psychotic material and to intervene in nonthreatening ways. This model has its base in psychoeducation and communications theory. The effectiveness of the content and context model is developed through the analysis of two case examples. The cases show the intervention to be helpful in decreasing family stress and in establishing empathic awareness between the family and the ill member. Implications for adapting this model to the psychoeducational model with the goal of enhancing the family's caretaking role are reviewed.