Medical Family Therapy (COU572)

The medical family therapy course introduces students to work collaboratively with medical and mental health professionals within a medical setting. It uses a common systemic language to address psychosocial problems of individuals, couples and families with acute and chronic medical related concerns from a systemic family therapy perspective. The course will also assess the role of the medical family therapist as he/she navigates relational conflicts that can arise in couples and families dealing with childhood developmental problems and medical related issues.

• Overview of Medical Family Therapy, including Conceptual and Meta-framework of Medical Family Therapy
• Clinical strategies for Medical Family Therapy, including some Approaches, Methods, and Techniques in wider Systemic Family Therapy
• Collaboration with Other Health Professionals
• Finding the Heart of Medical Family Therapy, and Shared Emotional Themes of Illness
• Chronic Illness, Life Cycle, and Primary Care
• Somatising Patients and Their Families
• Spirituality and Health in Medical Family Therapy
• Eating Disorders
• Caregiving, End of Life Care, and Terminal Illness
• Medical Family Therapy Informed Sex Therapy
• Core Competencies and Transformation
• Clinical Skills 1 to 13 (introduced throughout the course)

• Critique theoretical and conceptual framework underlying medical family therapy.
• Appraise the key ideas/ concepts including common systemic language in working collaboratively with medical and mental health professionals within a medical setting.
• Organise salient ideas and concepts with that of the person-of-the-therapist in a given clinical context.
• Assemble the collaborative skills needed to work with medical and mental health professionals within a medical setting from the medical family therapy perspective.
• Prepare one’s teaching ability to present systemic family therapy concepts and ideas to other health professionals within the medical setting.
• Formulate the medical family therapy concepts and technique(s) for application in one’s collaborative work with medical/ mental health professionals.