8.4 - Evaluation of systemic interventions

Summary

Systemic psychotherapists work therapeutically with individuals, couples and families, and offer consultation and systemic interventions with teams, agencies and organizations. The overwhelming findings from the research reviews and meta-analytic studies is that family therapy works compared to untreated control groups, with some demonstrated superiority to standard and individual treatments for certain disorders and populations. This chapter provides a list of people and problems who have found to benefit both clinically and significantly from the couples and family systemic psychotherapies compared to no psychotherapy; the list includes marital/couple distress and conflict, and outpatient depressed women in distressed marriages. Family therapy seems to be more cost-effective than standard inpatient/residential treatment for schizophrenia and severe adolescent conduct disorders and delinquency. Visits by family members to primary healthcare practitioners were reduced following family therapy intervention. The chapter ends with a discussion on the methodological problems and innovations which set the challenge for the future.