On Family Therapy Training in Psychiatric Education: A Recent Trainee's Perspective

Abstract

Family therapy has been labelled a neglected core competency of psychiatric residency training programs. Several models of effective integration into training in both general and child and adolescent psychiatry have been proposed, yet the restraint exhibited in educational guidelines to guide developed family therapy programming results in varied trainee experiences. This perspective piece offers the narrative of a trainee's progression through one educational program that offered a generous elective engagement with family therapy. This piece intends to complement in an original manner the existing literature supporting family therapy training for psychiatric trainees that are usually authored by senior clinicians and/or established proponents of family therapy. The program described in this piece is an American model that entailed mandatory seminar didactics with elective active case involvement and clinical supervision. The author's three‐year engagement with a family consisting of a young man diagnosed with schizophrenia and his mother, who comprised the active case component, is presented with a description of how both the family and the clinician developed through the process. The conclusion comments upon how this work facilitated ongoing work with severely disturbed children and their families upon the trainee's graduation to serve as a unit attending on a child and adolescent psychiatry acute inpatient service. This piece illustrates in a personal narrative the importance of family therapy training to the contemporary graduate and recommends greater immersion for psychiatric trainees in this modality.

Single session family therapy for beginners: what difference does it make to psychiatry registrars to participate in family sessions in front of and behind the screen?

“…The Competencies Framework created by the RANZCP explicitly endorses skills in family work, however in practice it is not always easy for trainees to gain relevant experience in this area. 2,4 The registrar training program at this CYMHS service attempts to remedy this by ensuring that trainees are given opportunity to learn practical skills through participating in SSFT, even though this is often challenging for trainees.…”

“…Psychiatry Registrars typically come into the CYMHS rotation with little or no experience of working with children and families. This is reflected in research, with Rait 9 finding that registrars typically have no more than one interaction with families as part of their training, while Rice’s work 2 illustrates the rarity of sustained engagement with family work. 3,4 The single session 5–9 approach is also a new way of working for most psychiatry trainees, however it offers a unique, hands-on opportunity to orientate new trainees to working in a child and adolescent mental health setting.…”