A case study of virtually delivered emotion‐focused family therapy

Abstract

Clinical psychologists and therapists are increasingly taking advantage of internet and mobile‐based technologies to deliver mental health services for individuals and groups since the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, there is a dearth of research evaluating the appropriateness of virtual platforms for family interventions. Further, no research has examined the effectiveness of weekly emotion‐focused family therapy (EFFT). This case study presents a virtually delivered 8‐week EFFT intervention, which supported caregivers to manage child symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger, facilitate emotion processing, and strengthen relationships. Two parents from one family during a marital separation participated and completed brief measures of therapeutic alliance, family functioning, parental self‐efficacy, and parental and child psychological distress at 12 time points as well as a posttreatment semistructured interview. A strong therapeutic alliance was formed, and general family functioning, parental self‐efficacy, parent psychopathology, and child depression, anger, and anxiety symptoms improved over the course of therapy.

Outpatient treatment of children and adolescents using emotion-focused family therapy (EFFT) caregiver workshops: A pre- to postintervention evaluation.

“…Another strength of this study is that the size of this evaluation is larger than many in the existing literature and includes a wide range of outcomes, assessed using standardized and validated measures to assess caregiver outcomes and their children’s mental health needs. It provides a baseline against which to compare EFFT workshops that were delivered remotely during and after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, as has been recommended and examined by EFFT practitioners and researchers (Foroughe et al, 2022; Smith et al, 2023). The limitations of this study are the lack of a preregistered protocol, control group or randomized design, the absence of follow-up assessments beyond the end of the 2-day workshop, and the exclusive use of caregiver self-report measures.…”