Multifamily Therapy Helps Parents Reconnect With Teens Who Refuse School

In a powerful look wrong family-based therapy, researchers uncover really group sessions helped parents of anxious teens consciousness little alone, rebuild communication, and rediscover dream astatine home.

Study: Does multifamily therapy thief parents of adolescents pinch anxiety-based schoolhouse refusal? A qualitative approach. Image credit: Jacob Lund/Shutterstock.com

Multifamily therapy, a shape of psychotherapy, tin perchance fortify family interactions and bonding and amended perceived self-efficacy and self-confidence of parents of adolescents who garbage to spell to schoolhouse owed to worry issues, arsenic reported by a caller study published successful PLOS ONE.  

Background

School refusal aliases absenteeism is simply a genuine nationalist wellness concern, arsenic it tin importantly summation nan consequence of schoolhouse dropout among children and adolescents and negatively impact their professional, personal, and societal lives successful adulthood.

Several factors tin perchance summation nan consequence of schoolhouse refusal among adolescents, including anxiety, excessive fearfulness, unhappiness, unexplained beingness symptoms, depression, and slumber disorders.

Social anxiety, successful particular, has been linked to schoolhouse refusal among adolescents. Several studies bespeak that societal worry successful adolescents importantly affects their schooling and relationships pinch others.

Several strategies person been developed to power anxiety-based schoolhouse refusal among children and adolescents. In this context, family interventions person shown effective outcomes, arsenic parents of adolescents pinch specified problems often acquisition exhaustion, frustration, helplessness, guilt, and anxiety.

Multifamily therapy is 1 specified family involution successful which a therapist brings together aggregate families sharing akin struggles pinch nan volition of processing a supportive community. This therapy combines nan elements of group and family therapies, allowing families to study from each other’s experiences and activity jointly pinch nan therapist to flooded each of their shared aliases very circumstantial individual problems.   

In nan existent study, researchers aimed to research nan experiences of parents who participated successful nan MULTI FAST program, which offers multifamily therapy to adolescents pinch anxiety-based schoolhouse refusal and their families.

A full of 31 parents from nan MULTI FAST programme participated successful this study. A semi-structured qualitative question and reply was conducted pinch each genitor six months aft nan completion of multifamily therapy.

Key findings and value  

The study of parents’ interviews highlighted 4 main domains: changes successful parents’ representations of their adolescents, parents looking astatine themselves successful a caller light, parents expressing their distress to their adolescents, and caller family interactions.

Specifically, nan interviews highlighted nan value of group meetings, wherever parents facing akin problems met pinch each different and shared their experiences astir schoolhouse refusal. This helped them consciousness little alone, stigmatized, judged, and guilty, and regain self-confidence and abilities.

It was besides observed successful nan interviews that parents of adolescents pinch schoolhouse refusal often consciousness distress, sadness, and helplessness. The multifamily therapy helped these parents definitive these emotions to their teenagers and different family members.

Some parents reported realizing their ain negative, and often traumatic, experiences astatine school, which perchance impacted their communications astir schoolhouse pinch teenagers. Similarly, teenagers discovered their parents’ school-time experiences, which helped them amended understand their parents’ reactions to schoolhouse refusal.

Another important uncovering from nan interviews was nan alteration successful parents’ representations of their teenagers. Multifamily therapy helped them recognize that their teenagers person important skills, tin analyse difficult situations, and tin find solutions. The therapy besides helped parents amended understand their teenagers' needs and really their ain reactions tin either trim or, connected nan contrary, summation their teenagers' worry levels.

Overall, nan parents reported that participating successful multifamily therapy importantly improved family interactions and communications and strengthened family bonding.  

The observed benefits of multifamily therapy are chiefly associated pinch mixing families pinch divers backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. The immense diverseness of family profiles is considered to beryllium a reassuring factor, helping parents reason that family functioning cannot beryllium nan origin of school-based anxiety, particularly erstwhile they comprehend different families arsenic much competent than themselves. Such reassurance helps parents alleviate their feelings of guilt.

Multifamily therapy sessions thief parents from different families stock their achy experiences and emotions, allowing them to go each other’s “co-therapists,” arsenic described by nan study authors. This further helps parents regain their assurance and expertise to empathize pinch their teenagers and cope.

Similarly, listening and talking to different teenagers during therapy sessions is simply a cardinal acquisition for parents, helping them recognize their ain teenagers' distress. Similarly, erstwhile teenagers perceive to different parents’ experiences, they go much knowing of their ain parents’ emotions and reactions regarding schoolhouse refusal.

Focusing connected family interactions is different cardinal facet of multifamily therapy. During therapy sessions, families are asked to picture recurring conflicts wrong their families and subsequently look for strategies to negociate these conflicts differently. Such activities require family members to activity connected family functioning done collaboration, which perchance improves family interactions and communications and strengthens family bonding.

Parents besides reported that galore adolescents had resumed schoolhouse aliases vocational training wrong six to 12 months aft therapy. However, nan researchers emphasized that nan study’s qualitative creation cannot beryllium a nonstop therapeutic effect, arsenic nan results bespeak parents’ perceptions alternatively than measured objective outcomes.

The authors noted that nan alleviation knowledgeable by parents mightiness partially bespeak entree nan system mental-health attraction itself, and nan scheme to behaviour a early quantitative study to measure nan measurable effectiveness of multifamily therapy for adolescents pinch anxiety-based schoolhouse refusal.

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