Scaling Up Family Therapy in Fragile, Conflict‐Affected States

Abstract

This article discusses the design and delivery of two international family therapy-focused mental health and psychosocial support training projects, one in a fragile state and one in a post-conflict state. The training projects took place in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. Each was funded, supported, and implemented by local, regional, and international stakeholders, and delivered as part of a broader humanitarian agenda to develop human resource capacity to work with families affected by atrocities. The two examples illustrate how task-shifting/task-sharing and transitional justice approaches were used to inform the scaling-up of professionals involved in each project. They also exemplify how state-citizen phenomena in each location affected the project design and delivery.

Preparing the Field for Feasibility Testing of a Parenting Intervention for War‐Affected Mothers in Northern Uganda

“…The field of family science has been making important strides in advancing successful models of collaboration and integration globally. Charlés () reported magnificent results introducing task‐shifting/task‐sharing and transitional justice approaches to therapy with families affected by atrocities in postconflict states. Likewise, Roberts et al.…”

Editorial: Narrative and Poststructural Perspectives in Couple and Family Therapy

“…These articles add to the impressive body of work about narrative therapies. Combined with the growing literature on other poststructural therapies, such as dialogic (Davis, 2012;De Haene, Rober, Adriaenssens, & Verschueren, 2012;Rober & Rosenblatt, 2015;Rober, Walravens, & Versteynen, 2012), open systems (Olson et al, 2012;Seikkula et al, 2015), collaborative (Anderson, 2012), interventive interviewing (Tomm, 2014), and just therapy, this body of work clearly illustrates how narrative therapy and poststructuralist therapies offer an evolving, fascinating set of concepts and methods.…”

“…Most specifically, a central tenet of narrative therapy is to deconstruct the hierarchies implicit in our understandings and privilege the voices of the less empowered. These ideas also have broadly influenced the practice of family therapy in the incorporation of social justice as a core aspect of practice (Charlés, ; Roberts et al., ).…”

Editorial: Social Justice in Family Therapy

“…It is a historic strength of Family Process that it contains key writings that challenged the prevailing social order even within its own community, as well as more broadly promoting social activism in relation to injustice. We are fortunate to have published such articles as: Watts‐Jones’ () exploration of how location of self and privilege affects therapy; Watts‐Jones, Ali, Alfaro, and Frederick () on mentoring trainees and therapists from diverse cultures accentuating social justice issues; Hernandez‐Wolfe and McDowell () on the location of trainers in relation to social justice; Waldegrave's () call for explicit inclusion of oppression and injustice as foci in therapy; Hernández, Almeida, and Dolan‐Del Vecchio's () description of their cultural competence model focused on accountability, critical consciousness, and empowerment; Charlés (, ) on family therapy in conflict zones; Rojano () on community family therapy; Falicov () on working with transnational immigrants; Sluzki () on the influence of political repression on therapeutic dialogue; Goldner, Penn, Sheinberg, and Walker () and George and Stith () on feminism in relation to intimate partner violence; and Addison and Coolhart () and Malpas () on social action therapies focused on LGBTQ couples and families. Other articles in Family Process have accentuated social action in research, as in Bava, Coffey, Weingarten, and Becker () on action research surrounding the Katrina hurricane; Baumann, Rodríguez, and Parra‐Cardona's () paper about the need for an activist perspective when conducting research on immigrant populations; and D'Arrigo‐Patrick, Hoff, Knudson‐Martin, and Tuttle's () summary of expert opinions about how to bring activism to family therapy.…”