Residency training and the later use of marital and family therapy in psychiatric practice

Marital and family therapy training during psychiatry residency was compared to later use, in practice, for 87 psychiatrists. Respondents reported modest to minimal amounts of training in residency but practiced marital and family therapy with a variety of problems, identified a spread of effect to other treatment modalities, and preferred marital and family therapy second only to individual therapy. These results suggest a trend towards incorporating marital and family therapy into psychiatry and also indicate levels of training which must be exceeded in order to achieve basic competency.