|
As a Marital and Family Therapist (MFT), I am a mental health
professional, with training in psychotherapy and family systems, and am licensed to diagnose and treat mental and emotional
disorders within the context of marriage, couples and family systems. My graduate degree is in Family Relations and
Child Development, with a specialization in Marital and Family Therapy. Before earning my degree, I performed
over 500 hours of therapy, under the watchful supervision of my professors, often live through the use of one-way
mirrors. After graduation, I had to practice two more years under clinical supervision. I passed
both a written exam and an oral exam, as required to receive my license. As a MFT, I am recognized as
a "core" mental health professional, along with Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Licensed Clinical Social Workers and
Psychiatric Nurses.
What makes me different from
these other counseling professionals is how the profession of Marital and Family Therapy understands "who is
the client" and "what is the focus in therapy." Traditional psychological counseling emphasizes
on the individual and what is going on in the individual's mind, while MFT views individuals as inseparable
from social units, such as marriage and the family. MFTs take a holistic perspective to health care; they are concerned
with the overall, long-term well-being of individuals and their families. A family's patterns of behavior influences the individual and the individual alters the family. In
Marital and Family Therapy, the unit of treatment is not just the person - even if only a single person is interviewed - the
unit is the set of relationships in which the person is imbedded.
Marital and Family Therapy is:
- systemic
- solution-focused
- brief
- specific, with attainable therapeutic goals
- designed with the "end in mind."
My professor in college use to say MFTs understand that the "whole is more than the sum of the parts."
I believe that this understanding of relationship "systems" is what sets me, as an MFT, apart from other counselors.
|
