Serious health conditions can severely strain family relationships. This article describes the Family Systems Illness (FSI) model to provide a guiding framework to help individuals, couples, and families navigate the changing landscape in the experience of illness and disability over time. This resilience-oriented practice approach distinguishes three dimensions of the illness experience and trajectory over time: (a) "psychosocial types" of health conditions, based on the pattern of onset, course, outcome, disability, and level of uncertainty; (b) major developmental phases in their evolution over time (initial crisis, chronic, terminal), facilitating longitudinal thinking about chronic conditions as an ongoing process with transitions and changing demands; (c) key family system variables, emphasizing: the interweaving of illness, individual, and family development; multigenerational themes and legacies related to illness and loss that influence coping and adaptation; family health belief systems (e.g., meaning-making, including influences of culture, ethnicity, spirituality, gender, and race), and the goodness of fit in the patient/family/health care provider relationship. The FSI model is intended for a broad spectrum of health conditions in children and adults, diverse health care professional disciplines, and clinical settings. Discussion includes timely, cost-effective applications in different clinical settings, including the use of prevention-oriented family consultations, psychosocial checkups, and brief and intensive interventions.

The Don Bloch Award is presented annually by the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) to a person who has made singular contributions to forwarding the cause of collaborative family health care. The 2016 Don Bloch Award was presented to Dr. Barry Jacobs, a licensed clinical psychologist and family therapist who exemplifies Don's intellectual, behavioral and relational attributes. (PsycINFO Database Record

OBJECTIVE:Because family oriented patient care improves patient outcome and reduces family burden, clinical family skills of communication, assessment, alliance, and support are part of core competencies required of all residents. Teaching residents to "think family" as part of core competencies and to reach out to families requires change in the teaching environment.METHODS:This article advocates teaching residents family skills throughout the training years as an integrated part of routine patient care rather than in isolated family clinics or a course in "family therapy." It reviews family skills required of residents in all treatment settings and family skills that are specific to inpatient, emergency room, outpatient, and consultation-liaison services.RESULTS:Families can be seen in multiple treatment settings throughout resident training using recent research to support appropriate interventions for patients and caregivers.CONCLUSION:The process of establishing change in the training environment requires a commitment on the part of the training faculty to include families, but is possible within the current training framework.

Objective The authors discuss the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for a resident to be competent in supporting and working with families, as mandated by the residency review committee (RRC) core competencies. Methods The RRC core competencies, as they relate to patients and their families, are reviewed. The Group for Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) presents an operational version of these core competencies. Results Methods of assessment, challenges in teaching, and ways of overcoming programmatic constraints are outlined. Examples of training programs that offer ways of integrating the teaching of family skills into existing programs are described. Conclusions The implications of the current RRC core competency requirements pertaining to families have the potential to change the training environment substantially. The GAP Family Committee proposes recommendations to facilitate the training of residents in family skills.

The stresses and uncertainties of cancer can be overwhelming for families. The Family System Illness model offers a psychosocial map to address these challenges and to make the inevitable strains more manageable. It provides a set of terms and a common language within a framework that attends to the longitudinal, psychosocial pattern of a health condition within a multigenerational, life cycle, and belief system context. Such a psychosocial framework can facilitate collaborative, effective coping and adaptation, thereby enhancing the quality of life for families affected by cancer. The model's utility is discussed for research, preventive screening, family assessment, treatment planning, and service delivery in a wide range of healthcare settings. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society.

The object of this study was to describe a feasibility study of the Tea and Families Education and Support (TAFES) intervention used in a group of newly resettled adult refugees from Kosova. The subjects were 86 newly resettled Kosovar refugees in Chicago who gave informed consent to participate in an investigation of the TAFES intervention. All subjects received family home visits, and most participated in the TAFES multi-family groups. The instruments were administered to adult participants before and 3 months after the intervention. The TAFES program had contact with 61 Kosovar refugee families, of which 42 families (69%) engaged in TAFES groups, including families with educated and working members. Several characteristics were associated with engaging in TAFES groups and included lower monthly family income and higher age of the first child. The uncontrolled postintervention assessments demonstrated increases in social support and psychiatric service use associated with engagement in the TAFES group. Participants also showed time changes in scale scores assessing trauma mental health knowledge, trauma mental health attitudes, and family hardiness. This study provides preliminary evidence that multi-family support and education groups are a feasible and possibly beneficial intervention for newly resettled refugees and indicates the need for further studies.

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No abstract available for this article.