Every family has its struggles. Life throws curveballs, tragedies happen, and conflicts arise. It can be hard to weather these storms without the support of a trained and licensed professional. That’s where family therapy comes in. It is a wonderful option for families looking to strengthen their connection and get through difficult times in a positive and constructive way.

What Is Family Therapy?

The term family therapy doesn’t refer to the number of people who are present in the therapy session, but instead to a specific perspective or framework for dealing with issues that arise within the context of familial relationships. Family here is not just about blood relatives, but can include anyone who plays a long-term supportive role in one’s life. Improved family relationships will help alleviate family tensions and conflicts, but can also benefit an individual’s mental health.

Who Should Seek Family Therapy?

People seek family therapy for a variety of reasons. Some may seek family therapy because they have family issues they want to solve, which often intensify due to lack of communication. Others may want to improve their relationship with certain family members like a mother and an adolescent daughter or parents with a child who is struggling at school. Some families experience an upsetting or traumatic event like divorce, loss, or severe accident that requires the assistance of a counselor to work through the emotional impact. Other families might seek support to cope with a mentally ill family member or someone struggling with substance use disorder.

When a family member is suffering from serious mental illness or addiction, family therapy often provides an additional form of support in conjunction with other types of individual treatment for the person who is struggling.

For example, for a relative who has a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder, family therapy can help members cope better as a unit, though the person with bipolar should continue to take their medications, see a therapist one-on-one, and participate in their individualized treatment. Similarly, for a relative battling addiction, the family can attend family therapy to provide additional support while the affected person continues to participate in residential treatment. Families may even participate in family therapy if the relative battling substance use disorder hasn’t yet sought out treatment.

What Are the Different Types of Family Therapy?

Below is an overview of the primary types of family therapy, so you can decide which type of counseling is best for you.

What Happens During Family Therapy?

Therapists employ many different methods, exercises, and techniques in any given family therapy session. Some of the issues that are typically covered in sessions include:

Seeking family therapy — whether in-person oronline— is a big step that should be celebrated. It can be scary at first, but trust that you are doing what you feel is best for you and your family and that you will all come out stronger on the other side of whatever you are going through.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

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