Basic family therapy skills, I: conceptualization and initial findings

This is the first report on a program of research designed to identify the most important characteristics of the beginning marriage and family therapist. The paper first surveys the literature in family therapy, social work, and psychology and finds that, although these factors are discussed for beginning psychotherapists, no set of skills are derived empirically. This study recruited all available members of the American Family Therapy Association (AFTA) and Approved Supervisors of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) who were experienced educators and trainers of family therapists. After nominating the most important generic-type characteristics for beginning family therapists, the participants rated the items, yielding a list of not only the most important skills, but also personal traits of beginners based on mean scores of the ratings. The final section of the paper discusses the implications of these findings and notes the current and future activities of the research program.     

Trends in family therapy supervision: the past 25 years and into the future

This investigation repeats a survey of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) Approved Supervisors done in 1976 and 1986. Despite negative contemporary contextual influences, the AAMFT Approved Supervisor credential is still attractive to the same percentage of the AAMFT clinical membership as formerly and reflects in general the demographic characteristics of marriage and family therapists (MFTs) in clinical practice. Across the last quarter century there has been a steady increase in female AAMFT Approved Supervisors and those with terminal master's degrees. These and other trends are discussed with a view toward what supervision is becoming and what it needs to become.     

An Empirical Assessment of the Goals of Family Therapy*

This study is an empirical assessment of the goals of family therapists. A list of goals was developed based on a theoretical clustering of the family therapy literature into the dimensions of communication, cohesion, and adaptability. Three hundred ten clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) responded to a questionnaire about their use of these goals in family therapy. The findings indicate that the goals employed by this sample seem to reflect ideas from the literature which are not the property of any one “school” of family therapy. The goals that were rated and ranked highest included encouraging family members to relate caringly, responsibly, and creatively in negotiating their differences. Goals that were rated and ranked lowest included the more advanced or technical communication skills and some cohesion goals that may be interpreted as related to institutional aspects of family life.     

ACCREDITATION: WHAT CONSTITUTES APPROPRIATE MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY EDUCATION?*

This study compared the mail questionnaire responses of 132 training directors and 79 clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). The findings about preferred criteria for accreditation, training requirements, and attitudes toward major professional issues suggested several key differences between training directors and clinical members, as well as important similarities. These divergent and convergent trends are described and discussed.     

Ethical dilemmas faced by family therapists

This study explores the reactions of 202 randomly selected clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) to a variety of ethical dilemma situations which examine what family therapists are doing in their work when confronted with these difficult situations. Eight of the issues studied have been discussed in the literature and eight are included in the AAMFT's Ethical Principles for Family Therapists (1984). In addition to showing how clinical members responded to dilemmic vignettes that reflect these dilemmas, results indicated that family therapists are facing these dilemmas, have a high rate of consensus of what they would and would not do in each situation and almost all the situations were seen as being ethically significant by the majority of respondents.     

Clinical Practice Patterns of Canadian Couple/Marital/Family Therapists

This clinical practice pattern survey had two unique aspects. It was a national survey of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) members in Canada that included all AAMFT membership categories, including student, affiliate, associate, clinical, and supervisor. It compared practice pattern data for clinical members from Canada and the United States. The results also showed that students, affiliates, and associates are very interested in identifying who they are as C/MFTs and that they are receiving various types of training. Clinical members in both Canada and the United States are fairly similar in terms of demographics and therapy practice, except when it comes to the models they identify as most influential. Future client satisfaction and outcome research is needed to determine how clients are specifically benefiting from therapy.     

A Curriculum for Graduate-Level Marriage and Family Therapy Education*

The Delphi technique of refining group opinion was used to develop a graduate level marriage and family therapy curriculum. Opinions were synthesized from a national panel of 20 AAMFT Approved Supervisors and 25 training directors of graduate-level marriage and family therapy programs. Three rounds of questionnaires were employed and 101 content areas met the criteria for inclusion into the final curriculum. Discussed are the similarities and differences of this curriculum and the current “model” AAMFT curriculum. It is hoped that the curriculum devised from this study will lead to the continued rethinking, refinement, and evolution of marriage and family therapy education.     

Teaching accountability: using client feedback to train effective family therapists

The AAMFT Task Force on Core Competencies (Nelson et al., 2007) proposed that marriage and family therapy (MFT) educators teach and provide evidence of trainee competence beyond coursework and accrued clinical hours. This article describes the integration of a systematic client feedback protocol into an MFT-accredited program's curricula to address the call for outcome-based learning. Outcome management (OM) provides a framework for teaching and assessing trainee effectiveness. Continuous incorporation of client feedback embodies collaborative, strengths-based, integrative, and diversity-centered program values. Students learn a system for being accountable to clients, the profession, and service communities.     

The Regulation of Marriage and Family Therapy1: An Update

Regulations concerning the practice of marriage and family therapy are reviewed. The current status of efforts to license and certify are presented, based on data from AAMFT state and multi-state division Presidents. Materials should be of significance to individuals and organizations attempting to modify current or promote new legislation.     

Sources of Influence in the Family Therapy Field: Publication Trends in Three Major Journals1

The institutional sources of all articles published in the three major marriage and family therapy journals through 1978 are identified. The journals reviewed include: Family Process, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, and the American Journal of Family Therapy. While no single center emerges as dominating the published family therapy literature, a small number of institutions clearly have exerted a profound impact on the literature of the field. Moreover, the absolute number of centers influencing the field is rapidly increasing, and these centers are becoming particularly influential in the newer journals in the field.     

A FAMILY THERAPY INTERNSHIP IN A MULTIDISCIPLINARY HEALTHCARE SETTING: TRAINEES' AND SUPERVISOR'S REFLECTIONS

Family therapy doctoral students from American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy-accredited programs are required to complete a full-time clinical internship. The literature provides little information about these internship experiences. Two doctoral-level marriage and family therapists summarize their professional and personal experiences in their internships located within a multidisciplinary healthcare setting. In addition, their supervisor reports on her experiences working with marriage and family therapy doctoral interns. We hope that this case report will stimulate all interns and their supervisors to provide feedback to their internship sites and graduate programs about their clinical training and the extent to which the programs prepared them for their marriage and family therapy careers in the larger health and mental health community.     

DOES ACADEMIC TRAINING BACKGROUND MAKE A DIFFERENCE AMONG PRACTICING MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS?

Using a national sample of practicing marriage and family therapists (MFTs) and their clients, this study investigated whether academic training background is associated with differences in pracice patterns and client outcomes. Clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy with academic training in psychology, social work, counseling, and marriage and family therapy were compared on a wide range of clinical practice variables, and their clients were surveyed about thier satisfaction and outcomes. Results showed highly similar practice patterns and client outcomes across all four disciplinary groups. Although the findings showed little evidence for the uniqueness of academic marriage and family therapy training among experienced MFTs, they also refute the notion that therapists trained in MFT degree programs practice in unusual or inferior ways compared to MFTs trained originally in other mental health disciplines.     

Student-faculty perceptions of multicultural training in accredited marriage and family therapy programs in relation to students' self-reported competence

Although the marriage and family therapy field's recent attention to multicultural issues is laudable, there appears to be little clarity on what constitutes an effective multicultural training program and the impact of the effects of such training on trainee multicultural competence. The field continues to be challenged at different levels-training, practice, research, the setting of the standards and the work of the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education, and the goals and strategic plan of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Board. This study focused on assessing the extent of multicultural integration at different levels of training and the relationship between such training and students' perception of their own multicultural competence.     

SUPERVISION IN FAMILY THERAPY: A DECADE RESTUDY*1

This paper reports on a 10-year replication of Everett's (1980) survey of Approved Supervisors of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). Significant differences were found between today's supervisors and supervision, including an increase in female supervisors, a shift toward a systemic theoretical orientation, greater concentration of supervisors in formal training settings, a great increase in the use of video recordings, a decline in the popularity of personal psychotherapy as part of training, a greater inclination of supervisors to identify themselves as Marital and Family Therapists (MFTs) regardless of original education, and others. The Approved Supervisor system appears to be fulfilling AAMFT organizational goals; other results will be reported elsewhere.     

Clinician identified barriers to clinical research

Involvement of front-line clinicians in clinical studies is crucial for quality marriage and family therapy effectiveness research. To identify common barriers to clinical research, 326 clinical members of the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy from three geographically diverse states were asked to describe their willingness to participate in a hypothetical research project. Therapists cited time constraints, outside limitations, client concerns, and a lack of understanding about and involvement in the study as major reasons for refusal to participate. Recommendations for building collaborative relationships between clinicians and researchers as well as future research are addressed.     

AAMFT ETHICAL CODE: "DUAL RELATIONSHIPS"

The current American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) Code of Ethical Principles prohibits an apparently wide, but vaguely defined, range of nonsexual, and presumably nonromantic dual relationships between therapists and clients, supervisers, employees and students. We suggest that this extension of the dual relationship prohibition is undesirable, for a variety of reasons. The most important of these is that attempting to make relationships simple by legislation, rather than dealing with inevitable complexity, prepares students poorly for the work they must do. Instead, we propose that training and supervision include serious emphasis on relationship complexity, and issues of exploitation and power, within the therapy relationship and within the training program or supervision itself.