Family Interventions in Health Care

In this article the author discusses the background and present status of family interventions in health care. He notes the convergence of interest occurring in this area among several health care disciplines during the 1970s and 1980s. He also summarizes his and colleague Macaran Baird's model for primary care family interventions in health care, which distinguishes between primary care interventions and specialized family therapy interventions. The author then describes new work on delineating levels of professional involvement with families in health care, and discusses curriculum implications of these levels. Finally, he offers advice and warnings about collaboration among different professional groups in this emerging area.

Family interventions in health care can be defined as efforts by health care professionals to work systematically with the patient's family for the purposes of prevention, treatment, management, or rehabilitation of biopsychosocial problems. The focus of such interventions may be: (a) on the individual patient, with the family playing a supportive...

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