Site design image

Family Therapy

When a child is diagnosed with autism, mental health issues or a disability, family therapy can help each member of the family cope and find solutions, together. It’s an effective, solution-focused treatment that can involve all, or some, members of a family.

Helping the Family Heal Together

Fraser Family Therapy helps with a range of mental and emotional disorders, such as depression, anxiety, marital distress and conflict. Therapy can also help address issues that impact the entire family dynamic, such as adolescent drug abuse, alcoholism and dementia.

Family therapy can improve family and partner relationships, work productivity, co-worker relationships, emotional health, overall health, social life and community involvement.

Depending on a family’s needs, family therapy can include parents and a child; only parents; parents, a child, and siblings; or non-immediate family members, with consent from the family.

How long therapy lasts depends on a family’s needs. Families may attend family therapy to process something and then move on. Other times, family therapy is ongoing, or families take a break, then re-engage. When a child has neurodevelopmental differences, families may need more support when their child enters a new life phase or stage of development, like entering adolescence.

Therapy is offered in person or through telehealth, which can accommodate multiple participants in multiple locations.

Fraser offers a type of family therapy called parent guidance, which supports parents after their child has received a diagnosis of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety or an intellectual or developmental disability. The therapist educates parents about their child’s diagnosis, works with them to better understand their relationship, and teaches them parenting strategies to help support their child.

Families can learn to communicate or understand each other better in therapy. For example, a mom and one child may attend family therapy to work on their communication. When they return to their family, the other members may notice how much their communication has improved and adopt these same techniques. Thus, the entire family improves how they interact with each other.