The Family Life Cycle: Developmental Crises and Their Structural Impact on Families in a Community Mental Health Center

Abstract

A typology for troubled families was developed based on the configuration of family members and the position of the identified patient within the family structure. This typology was investigated by surveying the demographic and clinical characteristics of 110 families of patients treated in a day hospital. Four types or "constellations" were found in the sample population. The families in the four Constellations differed significantly from one another in the gender, age, and diagnoses of the identified patient and the income level of the families. The Constellations thus appeared to constitute distinct clinical entities in the population studied. The reasons for the differences among Constellations are discussed in terms of the stress families experience during developmental crises involving structural change.

A Life History Model of the Alcoholic Family

“…Developmental approaches to the family, first introduced by sociologists as research models (13), have subsequently gained wide popularity both as conceptual frameworks for family life education (3, 6) and as models for clinical intervention (5, 10, 22). The core of the family developmental framework is a series of “concepts dealing with orderly sequences, the sequential regularities observable in the family over its life history, such as role sequences, careers of family positions, intercontingencies of careers, and stages of development (12, p. 11).” The family is presumed to have a life cycle or life history that can be divided into a series of recognizable stages, each stage in turn associated with a series of developmental tasks.…”