Marriage and Family Therapy
Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) is a common form of psychotherapy that treats a range of psychological and physical problems. In addition to examining family dynamics and relationships as a whole, it addresses behaviors by all family members or partners involved and allows the participants to explore how these behaviors affect the others involved. The range of these behaviors is expansive, from marital/couple conflicts to parent and child conflict, substance abuse, sexual dysfunction, stress, eating disorder, child behavior problems, and issues with care-taking of children and elderly family members. Treatment therapy is typically divided into sessions by a therapist, with some time spent on individual therapy and other on couple or family therapy.
What to Expect?
MFT is typically a short-term treatment solution, lasting (on average) for 12 sessions. This is merely a rubric, however, and is not set in stone. The duration of treatment will depend entirely on the individuals and issues involved.
Marriage/couple counseling begins with both partners meeting the therapist together. Afterward, the therapist will spend time with each person as an individual. The same goes with family therapy, where appropriate. After the initial information-gathering session, a therapist will have a general sense of the individuals, the family dynamics, and the issues at hand. While the therapist is the facilitator of the session, it is a time for everyone to voice their thoughts.
