Introduction

This chapter begins with the definitions of family therapy, gives an overview of the complex historical developments of the family therapy field, discusses the meager literature on the applications of family therapy to the elderly and ends with suggestions as to how the practitioner can apply family therapy concepts in their daily work. The chapter reflects the thinking of the two authors, who have been collaborating over the last three years in a project introducing family therapy into a geriatric psychiatry service.

The term family therapy can be used to describe interventions that can be added to other treatments within the framework of the biomedical model or the term can be used to describe an alternative model of helping people with problems. Family therapy as alternative model is also called the system or systemic model and it assumes that, to understand and help the older person with symptoms and signs of a functional psychiatric disorder, the clinician should have an understanding of the way symptoms and signs in an individual can be influenced by, and in turn influence interactions, behaviors and beliefs in other people, particularly in the family.

To clarify this distinction, it is useful to make the assumption that communications made by people can be understood in different ways.

Biomedical model

A clinician using the biomedical model, listening to an account given by an older person or one of their relatives would be listening for evidence and watching for behavior that helps them to decide what is wrong with the person.