Introduction
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is systematic, evidenced-based, manual driven, family-based treatment program which is successful in treating a wide range of problems affecting youth (including drug use and abuse, conduct disorder, mental health concerns, truancy, and related family problems) and their families in a wide range of multi-ethnic, multicultural, and geographic contexts (Sexton 2010, in press). While sharing many common features with other systematic models, FFT takes a comprehensive family-based and relationally focused approach that is theoretically based, has a systematic clinical protocol (“map”) that guides therapeutic case, and session planning. As a treatment program, FFT has attended to culture, the distinctive nature of the family, and the almost magical relational process that unfolds “in the room” during the therapy process.
Early use of FFT was limited to those trained by Jim Alexander at the University of Utah. In the late 1990s, FFT started to be...
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Sexton, T.L. (2019). Functional Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. 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_1149
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