Structural Family Therapy Summary

The authors of this article were concerned with the relevance and efficacy of the structural family therapy model in the twenty-first century. In order to address their inquiry, they used psychology databases to examine recent professional literature in the field of family therapy. The review of literature reveals that the structural model has evolved to meet the needs to current post-modern needs as evidenced by the finding that adaptability was the primary topic of six publications. According to McAdams et al. (2016), research indicates that the structural family therapy model is notable for attentiveness to client diversity. Additionally, this approach can be integrated without losing its key theoretical foundations. They discuss a few integrated approaches,

She ends by highlighting that recent literature supports this model, and emphasizes that the model can be used for a variety of family compositions and across cultures. In this article, Zafra (2016) makes a strong argument that the Latin population has been under-represented in professional literature despite its large population in United States. Additionally, there is a tendency to misunderstand cultural values, thus, leading to a decreased effectiveness. For example, she explains the importance Latinos place of parental respect, and warns that highly encouraging child autonomy could impact the alliance with the parents. She introduces how structural family therapy model fits well with this cultural value given the emphasis in this approach on the effectiveness of caregiver authority over child/sibling subsystem. Moreover, she asserts that research supports the efficacy of structural family therapy with Latino families. A case study is used to demonstrate the model with a focus on enactments to create change. To support cultural values and parental hierarchy, the therapist addressed the parents’ parental mistakes without the child present. Parents’ report indicated a significant amount of