Brief Strategic Family Therapy.

This article describes a family-based intervention, Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT), that has been developed over the last thirty years at the Center for Family Studies of the University of Miami, and is currently being investigated as part of protocol CTN-0014 (Brief Strategic Family Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abusers). Behavioral problems in adolescence rarely appear in isolation. Most commonly, problems occur in clusters that may include combinations of several problem behaviors, such as truancy, vandalism, gang participation and association with deviant peers, conflict with parents, poor academic performance and attendance, violence, drug use, risky sexual behaviors, and delinquency. BSFT is specifically designed to provide families with the tools to overcome these types of adolescent behavior problems and the family dysfunction that often accompanies them through: 1) focused interventions to correct maladaptive patterns of family interaction, and 2) skills building strategies to strengthen families.

This therapy is based on the systemic theory of family functioning which looks at the family as a system that influences all its members and has its own unique characteristics and properties that emerge and are apparent only when family members interact. The role of the BSFT counselor is to identify the patterns of family interaction that are associated with the adolescent’s problem behaviors, and then plan interventions that carefully target and provide practical ways to change those patterns.

Related protocols: CTN-0014