Family therapy in family practice: a solution to psychosocial problems?

The family physician can make advances toward helping parents and children with emotional or behavioral problems quickly and effectively in an office setting by gaining competence in family therapy. After learning to recognize several clinical presentations of families with behavioral and emotional problems, the physician can implement an abridged version of family therapy. This study suggest that a two-hour workshop on family therapy can increase physician awareness of the need to interact with dysfunctional families who present a child as the symptom bearer. The results also demonstrate that the actual clinical application of the therapeutic method may vary with physician's years in practice.