Medical Family Therapy: Advanced Applications

“High praise to Hodgson, Lamson, Mendenhall, and Crane and in creating a seminal work for systemic researchers, educators, supervisors, policy makers and financial experts in health care. The comprehensiveness and innovation explored by every author reflects an in depth understanding that reveals true pioneers of integrated health care. Medical Family Therapy: Advances in Application will lead the way for Medical Family Therapists in areas just now being acknowledged and explored.”

- Tracy Todd, PhD, LMFT, Executive Director of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

Integrated, interdisciplinary health care is growing in stature and gaining in numbers. Systems and payers are facilitating it. Patients and providers are benefitting from it. Research is supporting it, and policymakers are demanding it.

The emerging field of Medical Family Therapy (MedFT) is contributing greatly to these developments and Medical Family Therapy: Advanced Applications examines its implementation in depth. Leading experts describe MedFT as it is practiced today, the continuum of services provided, the necessary competencies for practitioners, and the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of health that the specialty works to integrate. Data-rich chapters model core concepts such as the practitioner as scientist, the importance of context in health care settings, collaboration with families and communities, and the centrality of the relational perspective in treatment. And the book's wide-spectrum coverage takes in research, training, financial, and policy issues, among them:

• Preparing MedFTs for the multiple worlds of health care
• Extending platforms on how to build relationships in integrated care
• Offering a primer in program evaluation for MedFTs
• Ensuring health equity in MedFT research
• Identifying where policy and practice collide with ethics and integrated care
• Recognizing the cost-effectiveness of family therapy in health care

With its sophisticated insights into the current state – and the future – of healthcare reform, Medical Family Therapy: Advanced Applications is essential reading for researchers and practitioners in the fields of clinical psychology, counseling, family therapy, healthcare policy, psychiatric nursing, psychiatry, public health, and social work.

The editors of this text are all nationally recognized scholars and educators in the areas of Medical Family Therapy and marriage and family therapy. Drs. Hodgson and Lamson have co- authored the first doctoral program in Medical Family Therapy in the United States with graduates in leadership, academic and clinical positions all across the country. Dr. Mendenhall, Hodgson and Lamson have designed training and clinical integrated care programs in primary, secondary and tertiary care settings. Dr. Crane has risen to the level of national recognition for his cost effectiveness research. All combined, these editors have over 300 publications, 600 presentations, 3 edited books and over 60 years of experience providing leadership, conducting research and training therapists to work in healthcare settings.