With its growing popularity in the field, Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) training workshops are becoming more prevalent in the family therapy training field. Because SFBT represents an innovative approach to therapy, does teaching this model demand innovative ways to train its students or are the same methods used in teaching other models of family therapy sufficient? To begin to address this question, it would be important to know how trainees experience SFBT training as it currently exists. This study qualitatively examined the process that trainees experienced when learning SFBT. Fifteen individuals responded to an email questionnaire, with 7 of those individuals participating in follow-up telephone interviews. In summary, being able to practice using a solution focused approach with clients and receiving supervision on those sessions from a supervisor who used a solution focused framework in giving feedback were factors identified as being most helpful in facilitating the learning process. The study also examined how the participants merged their existing beliefs about people and the therapeutic process with the assumptions inherent to SFBT. Finally, the study examined distinct moments, defined as moments after which the trainee knew that SFBT was a model they could use effectively with their clients. The distinct moments provided a picture of how the training and learning came together in practice for the participants. / Master of Science

Book Summary: Complements and expands upon the "Family Therapy with the Experts" video series produced by the same authors. Each chapter begins with a brief description of the theory and what makes it significant. The authors then delineate the clinical perspective

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The psychosocial needs of couples impacted by aphasia are often unmet. Sixty-one marriage and family therapists' (MFTs) experiences, perceived knowledge, confidence, comfort, and barriers in working with couples impacted by aphasia, and their interactions with speech-language pathologists (SLPs) were investigated using survey methodology. All MFTs were licensed, practicing in the US, and had at least 3 years of experience. Participants completed the following in order: (a) a pre-intervention survey, (b) one of two intervention conditions, and (c) a post-intervention survey. Twenty-eight respondents were randomly assigned to an education-alone intervention and 33 respondents were assigned to an education plus Relationship-Centered Communication Partner Training program (RC-CPT). The results of the present study suggest that MFTs who participated in this survey consider providing therapy to couples impacted by aphasia to fall within their scope of practice and already feel comfortable with various skills needed to provide therapy to this population. Aphasia education alone and education plus RC-CPT can both improve MFTs' knowledge, confidence, and comfort in working with couples impacted by aphasia but being shown a model of RC-CPT likely helped MFTs better visualize therapy, which bolstered changes in respondents' perceptions. Future development of RC-CPT should prioritize MFT involvement as collaborators and consultants. Continuing education courses and interprofessional collaboration are needed to better address the psychosocial needs of people with aphasia (PWA) from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This research explored how Arab American couples found the strength and resilience that empowered them to overcome the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the aftereffects that followed. Utilizing a family resiliency model grounded in systems theory and social constructionism, I interviewed 18 Arab American couples from the New York and New Jersey areas. I applied a phenomenological method of inquiry to gather the experiences of Arab American couples in order to understand the protective processes of resilience. Couples reported fear and caution because of incidents of threats and violence against Arabs in the United States. Some couples described incidents against them. Couples accessed a variety of resources to survive the aftereffect. These included coping skills developed during previous experiences of terror, American community support, determination, and religion. There were four major conclusions: resilient marriages, larger systems, process of identity, and religion: unify and identity. I discussed these conclusions in the context of the conceptual framework and made clinical and theoretical implications. / Ph. D.

Family businesses are a specific type of businesses that combine the family system with the business system. In this new system, emotions play an important role due to the long term relationships that exist amongst family members. This emotional component provides family businesses with unique advantages as well as challenges. Marriage and family therapists (MFTs) understand human relationships from a systemic approach. This specific training allows MFTs to be particularly well suited to help family businesses better deal with relational issues they might face by providing families with a different perspective for solution. Currently there is no consensus regarding the specific training MFTs should undergo in order to be better prepared to provide consulting services to family businesses. To meet this need, the purpose of this study is to identify the content for a model curriculum for MFT graduate students in family business consultation. A modified Delphi method with a mixed methods approach was used to obtain the content that a model curriculum should have. The Delphi method was used to obtain consensus on the opinions of MFT experts in family business consultation. A mixed methodology was used to triangulate the data obtained and to enrich the data gathered from a quantitative analysis. The results of this study show that marriage and family therapists wishing to pursue a career as family business consultants would benefit from additional training in the following specific areas: multidisciplinary theoretical approaches to understanding family businesses, consultation as a business, differences between consultation and therapy, and supervised practice. These results allowed the creation of curriculum components that could be used for a family business consultation course, workshops, and other educational events. Specialized training can help therapists provide better services to family businesses as well as an additional career avenue for the field of family therapy. / Ph. D.

Using survey data gathered by both Internet and mailed questionnaires, 125 graduates of COAMFTE-accredited marriage and family therapy (MFT) programs imparted information about their perspectives on their MFT training, their current and desired career practices, and their advice to MFT trainees and graduates about maximizing career options. The results demonstrated that MFT graduates attach many different meanings to the training and career experiences they've had. Marriage and family therapists work in a variety of settings, including agency and administrative work, private practice, academia, pastoral settings, school settings, medical administration and education, and residential treatment settings. Some graduates have left the MFT field to pursue other career avenues. The average income for MFT graduates in this sample was approximately $52,000 for doctoral-level graduates and $36,000 for masters-level graduates. Although approximately 72% of the participants reported satisfaction with their current professional position, several themes emerged in the data which indicate areas in which graduates felt unprepared when they entered the work force. Those areas include: information about the contemporary mental health marketplace, such as working with managed care and insurance companies and the political ramifications of being a marriage and family therapist in a professional climate dominated by other mental health disciplines. MFT graduates also reported lacking sufficient training in diagnosis and use of the DSM. Among the most valuable training experiences for participants were the clinical internship/practicum and the associated supervision received. Implications for the training and socialization of MFTs into the world of professional practice are discussed, along with suggestions for future research. / Ph. D.

Environmentally-constructed, regional culture as defined by geographic place is not generally included in family therapy research and training concerning race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other contextual factors. This grounded theory research project explores how practitioners working with families acknowledge, access, and use region as a cultural context in their service delivery, specifically in the New River Valley region of Southwest Virginia. Ecological theory, social construction theory, family systems theory, and cultural competency perspectives were used to frame the research questions, to develop the interview protocol, and to support the analysis of the properties and dimensions of the concepts and categories that emerged from the data analysis. The resulting grounded theory revealed that clinicians working with regionally distinct clients combine a client-centered approach with multiple-layers of regional knowledge and self-awareness. / Ph. D.

This study applied a theory of marriage and family therapy, specifically cybernetics, to the relationship between the US and Iraqi governments. This study also attempts to describe recent changes in Iraq incurred during the ongoing war in Iraq as either first- or second-order change. Taken from 2001 to 2005, 76 print media articles describing the war in Iraq from three major US news sources were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Four prominent themes: Military Operation, Costs, Perceptions, and Transition, were identified and described in cybernetic terms such as recursive processes, circular causality, and punctuation. Results suggested that international relationships can be described cybernetically, and that many recursive processes were evident in the war in Iraq. Results also show that determining first- or second-order change is very difficult in large system analyses. Implications for this research are presented and discussed. / Ph. D.