Abstract:
"His stroke affected his brain to where he has no filters and now says the meanest things to me and my sisters. I want to care for him but I cannot deal with all that comes with this sickness", Sally said to me while holding back tears. It is widely documented that when an illness impacts an individual, it greatly affects the family. Medical family therapy (MedFT) encompasses therapeutic work with patients, their families and the medical treating team. This collaborative approach demonstrates enormous therapeutic benefits. As a US-trained medical family therapist now practising in East Africa, I have found the juxtaposition of collaborative care for families like Sally's, her father, their culture, together with medical family therapists, and the medical fraternity, is a model to be most effective. The adverse effect that an illness has on the family has been documented not only as challenging, but detrimental to the health of the patient. As family dynamics broaden, and chronic illnesses increase, the impact of an illness becomes that much graver. The 2014 edition of Medical Family Therapy: Advanced Applications is a response and enhancement of treatment to the ever-changing interplay of family systems, the dimensions of medical illnesses and the heightened need for collaborative care. MedFT was introduced in the early 1900s, and the field has grown conceptually, particularly with regard to its application and sensitivity to culturally diverse groups of people. It is noteworthy that medical family therapists practising in East Africa and living in countries that have such strong cultural and familial values can apply the bio-psycho-social-spiritual framework that serves as the foundation for medical family therapy. This approach has been found to be immensely beneficial to patients (Tyndall, Hodgson, Lamson, White, & Knight, 2012b, p. 162), but as cultural dynamics shift, the treatment approach must keep up with these vast global changes. Medical family therapy has been found to be the transform ative vehicle of medical treatment as we know it (Doherty, McDaniel, & Hepworth, 2014). Written for medical family therapists who want to enhance their knowledge, better their application of treatment and strengthen collaborative treatment teams, Medical Family Therapy: Advanced Applications is divided into four critical areas: i) training; ii) research; iii) policy; and iv) finance. With the emphasis and selection of the various chapters on training delineated in part one, the authors suggest that the training of medical family therapists requires rigour and diversity. They do so by highlighting not just mainstream skillset training, but the importance of supervision, burnout prevention and leadership in the field. A welcome discussion in the first section of the book relates to the spirituality component of the bio-psycho-social-spiritual framework, which is not frequently acknowledged. This book highlights the importance of the spiritual component in healing and how to bring this component into one's work with patients. It has also been demonstrated that effective education of medical educators and practitioner students should enable them to go on to become competent practitioners who can apply their clinical skill in various cultural settings...