When someone enters mental health treatment, it might be easy to assume that their family will just be waiting on the other side to support them once they reintegrate into their regular lives. 

However, support during treatment is necessary for successful recovery. Part of that support often involves family therapy. While, as a family member and loved one, treatment isn’t exactly aimed at you, you’re a part of this person’s life, and you’re going on this journey with them.

In this article, we’ll address how you, as the family, can navigate family therapy, including:

• Why it’s important during mental health treatment
• The benefits of family therapy
• What happens during family therapy
• Challenges a family might face during it
• Who family therapy is for

What to Expect From Family Therapy at Sequoia

At Sequoia Behavioral Health, family therapy is a part of every clients’ wellness journey. Whether in person or virtual, family therapy with the client’s chosen family helps them resolve the past issues and learn the best way to support each other going forward.

We usually facilitate family therapy once a week while your loved one is in treatment, whether they’re in residential treatment or one of our outpatient treatment options. You’ll check in on everyone’s progress in the family unit and as individuals.

Learn more about the levels of care we offer at Sequoia.

Why Family Therapy is Important to Mental Health Treatment

Family therapy contributes to the success of a loved one’s mental health treatment. Counseling, whether it happens at the inpatient level or the outpatient level, is a journey that doesn’t stop once someone leaves the treatment center. 

How a family behaves after treatment affects their loved one’s journey. If past behaviors were hurtful or just unhelpful, they need to be addressed and changed. The family needs to learn how to be supportive without crossing into any enabling behaviors.  

Related article: Codependency and Enabling: What is Enabling? 

Especially after an inpatient stay, having a support system armed with knowledge and care will contribute to the success of treatment. Family therapy helps that support system gain the knowledge and understand the best ways to show care.

Family Therapy Isn’t Just for Blood Relatives

When someone enters a mental health treatment program here at Sequoia, they get to decide who their family is that they do family therapy with. Because family therapy is so important to treatment, what the relationship is to the client is less important than how intimate the relationship is. 

While clients often do family therapy with their immediate family, many find it more beneficial to do it with their extended family or close friends. Someone may have experienced trauma with their immediate family, or they could have a toxic relationship. In any case, chosen family is just as valid as blood-relations.

Benefits of Family Therapy

Family therapy contributes to the success of a person’s mental health journey, but how does the family benefit? It may feel like your loved one’s journey is the only important one, but everyone benefits from family therapy. 

Education About the Issues

If you’ve never struggled with mental health issues, they can be hard to wrap your head around. And when you don’t understand something, it can be hard to help the person who is dealing with it. 

One aspect of family therapy is providing a safe space to learn about your loved one’s the mental health issues. They may have felt uncomfortable discussing their struggles with you, or they didn’t want to upset you. During family therapy, the counselor will likely facilitate discussion about not only what your loved one in treatment is experiencing, but also what their treatment will look like and why. This type of discussion is called psychoeducation, and it’s beneficial for both clients and families.

Related article: A Full Guide to Psychoeducation

Resolve Past and Current Issues

Even with the best intentions, it’s possible to be hurtful to someone else. If there were behaviors from any person that anyone felt was harmful, you’ll likely talk about it in family therapy. 

Not only is it important for relationships for people to take accountability, but repeated negative behaviors can be detrimental to a person’s treatment and recovery. Both the client and their family will learn what didn’t work in the past, address and resolve the issue, and learn how to do better going forward. 

Formalize a Family Treatment Plan

Support for a person going through mental health treatment is more than just saying “I’m here for you.” While that is often a part of support that you learn in family therapy, you need to learn what else goes into it. Usually, there’s a lot of  introspection.

Since family therapy is for the whole family, there’s work to be done by everyone. Just like the client going through treatment, the whole family will spend time looking within and looking forward. The therapist will look at family dynamics and then identify what to work on and how.

This formal treatment plan includes goals for both individuals and the family as a whole.

What Happens in Family Therapy

A common thought is that family therapy when a family member is in treatment is all about confronting that one person and making sure they change. That’s not the case. Every family member puts in work to ensure the family structure is beneficial to everyone. 

Like many types of therapy, the first few sessions are about getting to know you. The counselor asks some questions to better understand everyone involved in family therapy, their dynamics, and what they believe are any issues that the family faces.

From there, the counselor will guide everyone to work together to resolve any issues. You may work on:

• Communication strategies
• Personal accountability
• How to be an effective support system
• Personal boundaries

Family therapy when someone is in mental health treatment may look a little different than normal. Much of the focus may be on how you’ve impacted your loved ones mental health for better or worse, and how to have healthy interactions moving forward.

Types of Family Therapy

Family therapy can have different approaches based on the family structure, issues, strengths, and goals. They all work to help create a healthy family unit and an effective support system, but they have different methods to get there.

Systemic Family Therapy

Systemic family therapy looks at the family as a cohesive system. You learn as a family how your behaviors and interactions affect someone else’s behaviors and interactions. Families learn how their culture, upbringing, and life experiences create how different relationships function

Structural Family Therapy

This style of family therapy works with the relationships and connections of everyone in the family unit in context. For example, a spousal relationship would have different parameters than that of a parent and child. These different types of relationships create the family structure or hierarchy.

Structural family therapy works with the idea that problems arise when the hierarchy isn’t healthy. Mental health issues, codependency, and enabling are just a few ways that this structure can create issues for families.  

Strategic Family Therapy

Similar to structural family therapy, strategic family therapy also works with familial interactions, relationships, and connections. It’s often a brief form of therapy only lasting about 12 sessions. 

Because of its short time frame, strategic family therapy focuses less on the past and more on the future. As a family, you learn to create positive bonds, develop healthy boundaries, and show healthy behavior during therapy. You often have “homework” to practice what you learn between sessions. 

Learn More About Our Holistic Mental Health Program

Family therapy gives you a pathway for you to be an active participant in your loved one’s healing journey. Your goal is to be the best support system possible moving forward, and family therapy teaches you how to do that. 

While you may only experience family therapy with Sequoia, your family member will undergo a number of therapy modalities that can address the root of their mental health concerns. 

Learn more about integrative treatment programming and the different modalities you’ll find here at Sequoia. Our admissions specialists are available to answer any questions or get your loved one started with their mental health treatment.