ABSTRACT This case study looks at how peer‐supported open dialogue (POD) was initially introduced within an adult specialist eating disorder service. It considers how the voices of the service user and their family network were heard and responded to and how this has laid the foundation for developing the POD approach as treatment as usual within this service.
ABSTRACT Eating distress is often approached as an individualised pathology, addressed through behavioural, cognitive and medical interventions. Family therapy offers important relational alternatives, particularly in child and youth mental health settings; however, contemporary practice is increasingly shaped by institutional priorities of risk management, symptom reduction and behavioural compliance. Although these priorities can play a role in safeguarding health and safety, they may also narrow opportunities to attend to relational meaning‐making and to the experiences of those within the broader relational network. Drawing on systemic and dialogical traditions, this paper proposes a dialogical reorientation in which eating distress is understood as meaningfully organised within relational, sociocultural and political contexts. A dialogical approach invites attention to the relational effects of eating distress, including its participation in processes of communication, regulation, connection and selfhood. It also extends enquiry beyond the immediate family or care network to the broader sociocultural and political conditions in which eating distress is lived and understood. Within this orientation, therapists shift from a position of expert towards participant in shared enquiry, allowing ethical practice to emerge within the therapeutic encounter. The paper explores implications for clinical practice, particularly in working with families and navigating tensions between care, control and responsibility. Practice vignettes illustrate how a dialogical orientation may take shape in family conversations. In doing so, the paper articulates a relational and dialogical approach that seeks to sustain therapeutic openness while meeting the demands of risk management and contemporary service contexts.
ABSTRACT This study examines how the animated children's program Bluey illustrates relational dynamics consistent with the core concepts of Bowen Family Systems Theory through qualitative content analysis. Findings indicate that selected episodes of Bluey provide concrete and accessible representations of abstract Bowen constructs, including differentiation of self, triangles, the nuclear family emotional system and multigenerational transmission processes. The analysis suggests that the series can serve as a reflective tool in clinical and family therapy contexts, particularly in facilitating clients' understanding of relational dynamics and emotional processes. By bridging theoretical concepts with everyday family interactions, this study highlights the potential utility of Bluey as a visual psychoeducational resource for illustrating complex family dynamics in therapeutic and educational settings.
ABSTRACT Emerging adulthood is a developmental period marked by increasing autonomy and identity exploration. For families, this transition requires renegotiation of roles, boundaries and relational expectations. Difficulties during this stage may emerge when family systems struggle to adapt to these developmental demands. This paper illustrates how a structural–strategic family therapy approach may create relational conditions that reduce family anxiety and support functional autonomy, whereas Bowen family systems theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding changes in emotional functioning in an emerging adult presenting with depressive symptoms within a family context characterised by intergenerational fusion and parental misalignment. A qualitative clinical case study is presented, drawing on systemic formulation and intervention with a family attending a university‐based psychological consultation service. The therapeutic process integrated structural, strategic and intergenerational techniques across family, parental and individual sessions. Therapeutic work facilitated increased functional autonomy of the emerging adult, clearer subsystem boundaries and reduced reliance on Daniel's symptomatic position to manage parental anxiety. Observable changes occurred at both individual and systemic levels, including improved autonomy, reduced parental overinvolvement and greater relational flexibility. This case highlights autonomy as a relational achievement embedded within family processes. Structural–strategic family therapy offers a useful framework for reorganising interactional patterns in families navigating the transition to emerging adulthood, particularly in contexts of prolonged co‐residence and emotional interdependence. Key Points for Practitioners Difficulties in emerging adulthood may reflect systemic challenges in family adaptation rather than individual pathology. Autonomy in emerging adulthood is often a relational process requiring renegotiation of family boundaries, roles and expectations. Structural–strategic interventions can help reorganise interactional patterns, clarify subsystem boundaries and support functional autonomy. Bowen family systems theory can offer a useful lens for understanding emotional reactivity, triangles and differentiated functioning during this transition. Engaging parental, couple and intergenerational dynamics is crucial when working with emerging adults who remain emotionally or practically dependent on the family home.
ABSTRACT Smartphones and social media are now embedded in family routines, yet family therapy research has paid limited attention to how digital media organise silence, avoidance and emotional distance. Vietnamese Gen Z young adults offer an important context for examining digital disconnection as a relational pattern rather than only as an individual addiction problem. This mixed‐methods study examined associations among problematic social media use, digital disconnection, parent–young adult communication, family functioning, psychological distress and perceived family emotional distance, and explored how participants made sense of these processes in their family relationships. An explanatory sequential design was used. Survey data from 462 Vietnamese young adults aged 18–29 were analysed with reliability, exploratory factor, discriminant validity, sensitivity, regression, bootstrapped mediation and moderation checks. Thirty follow‐up interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Digital disconnection was strongly associated with perceived family emotional distance and remained significant after covariate adjustment and item‐reduction sensitivity checks. Communication statistically mediated this association; cohesion/flexibility was protective but did not moderate it. Interviews described phones as shields, pauses, coping objects and markers of misunderstanding. Digital disconnection is best understood systemically as a pattern embedded in family routines, intergenerational expectations and repair difficulties. Therapists should assess what phone use does in relationships, support culturally respectful repair and avoid reducing young adults or parents to blame‐based accounts.
