Functional Family Therapy
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is all about helping youth and families who are in trouble. Central to FFT is the belief this can be accomplished by changing family interactions and improving relationship functioning as the primary vehicle for changing dy
- PDF / 1,708,214 Bytes
- 27 Pages / 504 x 720 pts Page_size
- 72 Downloads / 223 Views
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is all about helping youth and families who are in trouble. Central to FFT is the belief this can be accomplished by changing family interactions and improving relationship functioning as the primary vehicle for changing dysfunctional individual behaviors. FFT shares many similarities with other systems approaches; however, FFT offers a comprehensive framework for understanding adolescent behavior problems that is quite unique. This framework provides the context for integrating and linking behavioral and cognitive intervention strategies to the specific familial and ecological characteristics of each family. As such, FFT is also about therapists, about training and supervision, and about treatment and other (educational, judicial, religious, cultural, political, economic, marketing) systems that surround families, therapists, and agencies. Like all coherent models of change, FFT is phasic and developmental. Every system, ranging from human beings (and all animal life) to all created products (cars, symphonies, clay figures and so on) begins in a different form than what it later becomes. Physical systems and most conceptual systems undergo phases which build upon each other, and this development usually follows a specific pattern. So too do families and therapists as they undertake and complete their journey together toward positive family change. For over 3 decades, FFT itself has evolved from the experiences and results of clinical research, critical review, and James F. Alexander ● University of Utah Michael S. Robbins ● Oregon Research Institute
R.C. Murrihy et al. (eds.), Clinical Handbook of Assessing and Treating Conduct Problems in Youth, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-6297-3_10, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
245
246
James F. Alexander and Michael S. Robbins
dissemination across populations, cultures, and treatment contexts. Not surprisingly, across multiple contexts, research teams, and clinical providers there is a core philosophy or value about the critical importance of research and evaluation and accountability. This value epitomizes our ultimate focus on providing the highest quality of care possible to youth and families by monitoring and studying all aspects of training, supervision, and implementation. The purpose of this chapter is to help readers understand the essential philosophy and components of FFT. In doing so, we describe how FFT systematically matches interventions to the unique and special qualities of each youth, family, culture, and treatment system. In addition, we describe how findings from research studies have led to evolutions in the clinical model.
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF FFT AS AN EVIDENCE-BASED INTERVENTION FFT is viewed as an empirically supported model for adolescent drug use and behavior problems (Barton, Alexander, & Sanders, 1985; Waldron & Turner, 2008). However, the emergence of FFT as an empirically based intervention did not occur suddenly, nor is it complete. Since the early 1970s, the conceptual developmen
Data Loading...
