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Functional Family Therapy

Charlie S
Functional family therapy is getting popular to help families with bitter conflicts, fights, misunderstandings, to live happily together. It helps people with disorders, mental illnesses to overcome difficult situations. The therapy is easy to understand but difficult to apply.
Functional family therapy programs are meant to create a good and positive atmosphere between youth and their family members. These programs are most useful to deal with the problems faced by teenagers and youngsters in the age group of eleven to eighteen. However, experience and history show that even younger children have benefited from these programs.
The reasons for conflicts between family members can be many. However, the aim of functional family therapy is not to bring them to a halt, but to make them constructive and meaningful, without letting the love and unity among the family members reduce.
Therapists aim at bringing back the sense of respect of the family members for each other which have been lost due to feelings of hatred and conflicts between them.
Functional family therapy involves giving guidance and counseling to all family members in a clinical atmosphere or setting. The therapist will personally guide each member of the family separately or individually, to understand his/her problems carefully. He will have a detailed discussion with each family member to decide why fights happen in the family.
Then, it is time to suggest measures to be adopted to bring down the fights and solve the differences of opinion among family members. Therapists observe the changes in individual behavior after the therapy, and change the way of guidance if it is less effective.
These days, many family problems arise from relationship-related issues; that's why, for a functional family, counseling techniques are important. Marriage counseling and relationship advise is a part of this therapy. Functional therapists can play a vital role in helping people to control their anger outbursts and keep their cool in difficult situations.
Behavioral disorders or problems are quite common these days, and are sincerely addressed. On an average, the number of sessions can be eight to twelve, under normal circumstances. In case of extreme cases, the number can increase accordingly.
Changing times can be more challenging for functional therapists, as the number of people who need assistance are on the rise tremendously due to rising work-related stress. So, to give quality services, they will have to bring innovation in their ways of teaching and suggesting ways for conflict resolution.
However, one thing is for sure, that the demand for these professionals will never be less, due to their ability in handling complex situations.