Available for the 25-26 training year
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The Family Therapy Clinic focuses on treatment and training in Family Therapy assessment, consultation, and ongoing outpatient psychotherapy. It provides weekly systemic strength-focused treatment to families of children and adolescents with a wide range of diagnoses. Patients are referred from the community or after having gone through one of the inpatient or specialized outpatient programs at UCLA (such as those for anxiety or mood disorders) when more complex family dynamics appear.
The Structural Integrative Family Therapy approach utilized is an integration of Structurally focused family therapy with brief attachment-based experiential and emotion focused psychodynamic approaches. Trainees receive ongoing training in the theories and techniques behind this approach through live supervision, readings, and case discussions.
DAY, TIME, AND LOCATION:
Tuesdays 2:30pm-6pm
Zoom (currently via Zoom until further notice, then: 300 Medical Plaza, Room 1214)
HOURS PER WEEK:
4 hrs.
DURATION OF ELECTIVE:
6 months
FACULTY & STAFF:
Veronica Barenstein, PhD
TRAINING PROVIDED:
This elective aims at helping interdisciplinary trainees shift their mindset and expand their therapeutic range to include a systemic focus in their thinking and in their interventions regardless or the presenting problem. Family members’ interdependence is highlighted, and interventions have a relational focus.
Trainees who are interested in learning Dr. Barenstein’s Structurally-informed family therapy approach to assessment and treatment (anchored in her training at the Minuchin Center for the Family and with Salvador Minuchin), can explore it as a primary treatment to reduce or effectively eliminate individual symptoms. They can learn to use family therapy as the main intervention to produce change, in addition to employing it as an adjunct to other approaches.
Trainees will carry at least one family and will conduct a systemic assessment and weekly family therapy with live one-way mirror supervision including real-time intervention suggestions and consultations as well as pre- and post- session supervision and theory discussion during group and as needed. In addition, they will participate in ongoing live observation and discussion with the supervisor of other trainees’ family therapy cases. The clinic begins with 1 hour of supervision focused on the ongoing cases including didactics and theory discussion geared both to the specific needs of the cases being treated and to ongoing training in the Structural Integrative Family Therapy approach. In addition, there is an ongoing focus on stretching each trainee’s therapeutic range.
DIVERSITY TRAINING:
This elective offers the unique opportunity to enter cases through a systemic lens regardless of the identified patient and diagnosis. At the core of a systemic view is the idea of placing the presenting problem in its context, not only in terms of the family dynamics and developmental stages but also in terms of the socio-cultural context and stressors. A truly systemic approach must include an awareness of the larger context in which our patients’ problems have emerged as well as an exploration and acknowledgment of ways in which this context may contribute to maintaining the problem or shape the patients’ attempted solutions. An intersectional view of culture which includes ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status, among other things, is always a part of the discussion during supervision, case conceptualization and treatment planning. In addition, a central belief of this strength-focused approach is that the therapy is co-constructed and, if we help them get unstuck, patients will develop their own solutions which will reflect their own culture and values. During supervision, the role of the therapist and the power imbalance inherent in this process is continuously examined with attention to increasing trainees’ awareness of how the therapist’s own culture and values may unwittingly impact the treatment when left unexamined.
SUPERVISION PROVIDED:
Method of Supervision: Direct Observation & Live One-Way Mirror Supervision of every session, periodic in-session live consultations by Supervisor, Case Presentation & Discussion, tape reviews
Format: Group discussion & group observation, Individual supervision as needed
Hours Per Week: 3-4 (1 hour of group, 10-15 minutes of individual per trainee)
Days and Times: Tuesdays 2:30pm to 6pm
Names of Supervisor(s): Veronica Barenstein, Ph.D.