The family therapist and the family physician: a cooperative model

This study discusses the current lack of cooperation between family physicians and family therapists and its roots in the different belief systems that influence each profession. Family medicine and family therapy have each, in different ways, espoused a reductionistic view of the systems model they each formally espouse. A model is proposed that enables each profession to work cooperatively with the other by recognizing the particular dysfunction present within the family. This model is explained and clarified in terms of the interaction of biomedical and developmental crises in the course of the normal family life cycle. The purpose of this model is to provide a framework through which the two professions of family medicine and family therapy can cooperate to treat the various kinds of levels of dysfunction that occur within families.