An Introduction to Family Systems Therapy

A residential treatment center for young women, Trinity Teen Solutions, Inc., offers services consistent with Christian values and a God-centered approach to treatment. Trinity Teen Solutions makes extensive use of family systems therapy, a therapeutic approach that looks to the family as the primary emotional unit.

Family systems therapy operates according to the core belief that an individual cannot separate his or her behavior from the functioning of the family unit as a whole. In other words, the dynamics of a family dictates the behavior of its members. As such, family systems therapy places a much greater emphasis on interpersonal relationships than the individual psyche, which represents the focus of most traditional psychotherapy.

In strategic family therapy, participants look at family processes such as problem-solving strategies and communication. At the direction of the therapist, participants learn to redefine difficult scenarios or use seemingly paradoxical interventions. Structural family therapy looks primarily at subsystems within the family, including parent-child relationships and specific relationships among siblings.