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LieutenantNarwhal954
Explain whether you believe the proposed case conceptualization is…
Explain whether you believe the proposed case conceptualization is the most beneficial for the case selected and why
Theory/Theorist: Family Theory
Presenting Problem: The family consists of Olivia, a 15-year-old female struggling with anxiety due to daily life pressures as the oldest child in a family abandoned by their mother. Luis, the father, is a 40-year-old immigrant from Honduras. He works two jobs to provide for the family. Olivia cares for her three younger siblings, two sisters, Catrina, who is 7, and Elena is 9, and a brother, Sancho, who is 11 years old. Sinead, the children’s mother, abandoned the family six years ago, just one year after her youngest sister’s birth. Sinead has cut off communication and does not support the family at all financially, even though she works an excellent job as a traveling nurse. Olivia is developing signs of depression; she feels she has no time for interest in social activities, she feels her future is bleak, and she avoids interactions with peers or goal setting. She has failing grades and poor attendance at school, so she has been referred to counseling. Luis is proud of Olivia’s ability to care for the family and household and tells her she will be a good wife and mother someday.
Hypothesis: The lack of communication and disconnection between the family and the mother leaves the children feeling rejected and possibly to blame for the mother’s going. Olivia is following the behaviors modeled for her by her mother well. Still, she is an adolescent who is missing out on her social and academic development due to her father’s expectations for her to care for the family. The trauma of the abandonment likely affects each family member differently. Luis and his children are of different races, growing up in different times and countries. Empowering the family by giving each member role responsibility and the ability to understand their family’s unique dynamic will enhance their feelings of unity and communication skills.
Goal: The goal of applying Family Theory is to support change within the family unit by addressing the strengths and needs of all family members and how they each impact one another as a bonded family. The family will work in therapy to overcome the issues keeping them stuck from moving forward into new developments and making them dysfunctional (Dykeman,2022).
Interventions:
Intervention 1: Satir’s Conjoint Family Therapy could be utilized with this family to build trust and explore the emotional context of family life. Because this family lacks consistent communication between the father and the children, this type of therapy exercise would help Luis understand how abandonment affects his children over time. They could all reconnect with each other using the six steps of this technique (Dykeman, 2022). The hope would be to establish an open line of communication between family members rather than the continued neglect to talk about how things are going for everyone.
Intervention 2: Minuchin’s Structural Family Counseling would transform the family by forcing them to consider different aspects of their circumstances and how each is affected (Dykeman, 2022). This is a therapeutic way to introduce concepts to benefit the family that might be difficult to receive, such as family chores being more divided and equal, requesting communication with mom, etc. Structural Family Therapy builds empowerment to integrate and generate changes that help a family remain transformational.
Intervention 3: Introducing Hardy’s Multicultural Relational perspective in therapy would help this family accept their different ways of thinking and respect why this is normal (Dykeman, 2022). The hope would be for the kids to develop a deeper appreciation for how Luis thinks about caring for his family and for Luis to understand how his kids feel about their futures.
Expected Outcome: The goal of Family Therapy is to take a systems approach to counsel the family as a group functioning together to have more empathy, understanding, and communication skills to facilitate changes that benefit the comfort and function of the household where they are all living together. This type of therapy focuses on helping the group become more harmonious and supportive of one another (Dykeman, 2022).
