Name of Strategy or Intervention
Whole Family Therapy
Introduction
Whole family therapy (WFT) is a modality used by therapists to work with the entire family system during a course of therapy. When utilizing WFT, therapists work with as many members of the family as possible and practical, unless there are extenuating circumstances or the therapist is using a therapeutic strategy that precludes some family members from being present, such as in some treatments for abuse. The therapist works with the family to determine who should be included in the therapeutic system. In many cases, WFT includes parents/caregivers, children, and siblings. Depending on the presenting problem and family circumstances, a family may also include grandparents, extended family, or adult children, and can be defined more broadly to include any person who is deemed an important player in the system, such as friends, teachers, and other community members. In WFT, all of the identified members of the family...
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Breunlin, D.C., Jacobsen, E. (2019). Whole Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_555
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