Family Therapy and Schizophrenia

The early concepts of family influences in the development of schizophrenic illness have been reviewed. The empirical research which these concepts generated has failed in large measure to confirm many of these hypotheses, but has demonstrated reliable and valid differences between families of schizophrenics and those of patient and non-patient controls. However, these empirical findings have had little impact to date on family therapy as it is practised, and the failure to confirm theoretical concepts from psychoanalysis, systems, and communication theories has not led to a re-examination of family therapy and its theoretical basis.

The author suggests that the empirical research on family influences in schizophrenia and particularly those factors which precipitate and perpetuate schizophrenic symptomatology can be applied to evaluation of schizophrenics and their families, specific family therapy with families of schizophrenics, and particularly suggest that evaluative research on the effectiveness of family therapy in schizophrenia will be necessary for family therapy to become more than a highly fascinating and experimental technique in the total management of schizophrenic patients.