[Experiences with family therapy and work with relatives in social psychiatry]

Psychiatric thinking takes the social context of our patients more and more into account. The practitioner is confronted with a great variety of different approaches and concepts such as multiple forms of family therapy, family education, supportive family intervention, relatives' groups, and relatives' self-help. The author, a structural family therapist, describes his own experiences with several of these approaches and discusses questions of practicability, indication and effectiveness.