Research supports that child parent relationship therapy (CPRT), a filial therapy approach, has strong effects on participating parents and children. Some speculate that filial therapy improves the family system; however, minimal research exists to support this claim. Using a single-case design, researchers examined CPRT's impact on the functioning of 8 families. Results revealed that 6 families experienced statistically significant improvements in targeted areas of family functioning. Results from self-reported measures indicated that 7 families improved in family satisfaction, 4 in cohesion, 3 in communication, and 1 in flexibility. Observational measures also revealed improvements: 5 families in flexibility, 4 families in cohesion, and 4 families in communication. The results support that the benefits of CPRT may extend to the family system.

In this article, the authors present an extensive review of the research conducted to date on filial therapy. Filial therapy, first described by Bernard Guerney, Jr. (1964) 50 years ago, is an innovative outgrowth of child-centered play therapy in which parents receive training, supervision, and support as they embark on a process of learning how to conduct therapeutic play sessions with their own children. The authors reviewed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research studies in which researchers investigated the outcomes and experiences of filial therapy with participating children, parents, and families. Results are synthesized according to the following areas: general effectiveness and the reported outcomes and experiences related to participating children, participating parents, parent–child relationships, and family functioning.

The call for family-centered therapeutic services, especially for families of young children, has come from governmental organizations, professional associations, practitioners, and families. Play therapists and family therapists are prime candidates to provide such services, but professional research and literature suggest that practitioners within these fields tend to exclude members of the family system. This had led some to propose filial therapy, an outgrowth of child-centered play therapy, as a means of meaningfully integrating parents and children in treatment. However, play therapists may have difficultly conceptualizing from a family systems lens, while family therapists may struggle to see the theoretical compatibility of filial therapy with their systemic views. This article demonstrates the conceptual overlap between filial therapy and the major family therapy models with the goal of encouraging play therapists and family therapists to answer the call to provide family-centered services.

Childhood disruptive behaviors in early childhood present difficulties for teachers and parents, can be indicative of emotional and social disturbances for children, and are associated with long-term negative consequences. This quasi-experimental study employed single-case design research to investigate the effects of child-centered play therapy on children identified with clinical levels of disruptive behaviors. Children participated in an A-B design, receiving multimodal CCPT (i.e., individual and group) in Phase B. Phase A consisted of no treatment to establish a baseline of behavior. Results indicated two out of three children showed marked improvement during the intervention across treatment phases. Implications and limitations are discussed.