Psychoeducational multiple-family groups were more effective than single-family treatment in extending remission, especially in patients at higher risk for relapse, with a cost-benefit ratio of up to 1:34.

The rural child and child psychiatry, in The Basic Handbook ofChild Psychiatry, vol 5. Edited by NoshpitzJD.

The wish to adopt ideas and metaphors from science can have a constricting effect on thinking about family therapy theory and practice. We describe three examples from the recent literature. The two problems describe: (a) borrowing the prestige and certainty of scientific ideas and metaphors and using them as cultural representations of reality, and (b) embracing certain philosophically comprehensive systems of thought. We then recommend some appropriate borrowing from the natural history tradition of science, and give some examples of ways in which that tradition has widened rather than narrowed the range of ideas that are used in family therapy.

No abstract