Our listserve can help with interesting questions.
Here’s a set of answers to a recent query: Greetings, my name is Mauricio Folgar, I am a a C-L Psychiatrist from Honduras, I am currently studying for my masters degree in family therapy (1st yr) at the Instituto de la Familia (IFAC) located in Mexico City. I am interested in how family communications patterns affect the evolution of family members diagnosed with epilepsy.
A sample of the responses:
From John Rolland:
My own work over the past 30 years has been in developing the Family Systems Illness model and writing about/working with couples and families facing a broad range of chronic and life-threatening medical conditions across the lifespan. This has included seizure disorders. A few current references:
1) I have a paper featured in the current issue of Family Process: Neurocognitive impairment: Addressing Couple and Family Challenges,vol 56, no 4, 799-818, 2017. 2.Also, I will be doing a new course on this topic at the APA this year.3. I have a forthcoming book with Guilford Press (April 2018). Helping couples and families navigate illness and disability: An integrated approach.
From Gabor Keitner:
.LaFrance Jr., WC, Alosco, ML, Davis, JJ, Tremont, G, Ryan, CE, Keitner, GI, Miller, IW, Blum, S, Impact of family functioning on quality of life in patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures vs epilepsy. Epilepsia, 2011:52(2):292-300
.Keitner, GI, Family assessment in the medical setting. In The Psychosomatic Assessment, Strategies to Improve Clinical Practice. Fave, GA, Sonino, M. Wise, TN (ed), Adv Psychosom Med. Basel, Krager, 2012, vol 32, pp 203-222
Keitner GI. Family Therapy In Chronic Medical Illness. Fogel BS, Greenberg DB..(ed) Psychiatric Care of the Medical Patient, 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press 2015
From Lee Combrinck Graham: There’s a chapter in my edited book: Children in Family Contexts, second edition, Children with Chronic Illness and Physical Disabilities (and, of course their families), by Judith Libow - Chapter 10, book published by Guilford in 2006.
From Susan McDaniel:
George Engel, the author of the “Biopsychosocial Model,” wrote what used to be a classic paper - classic in the sense of Homer and Shakespeare, maybe - called “Psychogenic Pain and the Pain Prone Patient.” While he was not a family therapist or Family Systems Thinker - I think because those classicists had not yet been invented, this is a wonderful account of a somatic symptoms in the family. . It’s from the American Journal of Medicine June, 1959.
From Massimo Clerici:
I was interested long time ago in family matters in chronic medical ilnesses working on the topic of “expressed emotion” concept and psychoeducation in different mental disorders. There is a great amount of research on this topic. You can check that field from ’80ies and try to find specific EB literature on chronic medical illnesses (cancer, neurological disoeders, heart diseases and, finally, Alzheimer Disease…).
From Ira Glick: Not sure how helpful this will be -but Chap 21 of our textbook, Couples and Family Therapy, 5th ed, has an entire chapter on working with families in a medical setting.Let me know if this is relevant.,
