Family Therapy: Small Effectiveness

Small effectiveness: 0.31

What is Family Therapy?

1. Emphasizes family as important to psychological health, therapy involves the family or couple.

2. Average sessions 5-20, brief

3. Therapist may focus on analyzing specific previous instances of conflict, as by reviewing a past incident and suggesting alternative ways family members might have responded to one another during it.

4. More interested in maintenance and solving problems rather than identifying single cause.

Evidence:

0.24 small effect: reduced severe substance abuse, delinquency, and comorbid behaviors in adolescents (van der Pol, Hoeve, Noom, Stams, Doreleijers, van Domburgh, & Vermeiren, 2017)

0.48 small to moderate effect: reduce disruptive behaviors and severe substance abuse in adolescents (Hartnett, Carr, Hamilton, & O’Reilly, 2016)

0.21 small effect: family therapy performed better than treatment as usual (Baldwin, Christian, Berkeljon, Shadish, & Bean, 2012)

Baldwin, S. A., Christian, S., Berkeljon, A., Shadish, W. R., & Bean, R. (2012). The effects of family therapies for adolescent delinquency and substance abuse: A meta‐analysis. Journal Of Marital And Family Therapy, 38(1), 281-304. doi:10.1111/j.1752-0606.2011.00248.x

Hartnett, D., Carr, A., Hamilton, E., & O’Reilly, G. (2016). The effectiveness of functional family therapy for adolescent behavioral and substance misuse problems: A meta‐analysis. Family Process, doi:10.1111/famp.12256

van der Pol, T. M., Hoeve, M., Noom, M. J., Stams, G. M., Doreleijers, T. H., van Domburgh, L., & Vermeiren, R. M. (2017). Research review: The effectiveness of multidimensional family therapy in treating adolescents with multiple behavior problems—A meta‐analysis. Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, 58(5), 532-545. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12685