ABSTRACT
The approach to family assessment presented here is based on the notion that a family is a system of interdependent individuals. For many years family therapists, psychiatrists, clinical and developmental psychologists, and social workers have been advocating the view that individual behavior and functioning cannot be understood in isolation from the person’s primary social context, usually the family. However, because the family system is a complex organization, the methods for studying interdependence in family relationships are complex as well. Most family assessment instruments have tried to simplify the procedure, obscuring the systemic nature of family relationships in the process. In this chapter I present the Round-Robin Family Assessment with Social Relations Model analysis (RR-SRM), a quantitatively based method for assessing individual families that goes a long way toward revealing the complexity of family systems and how each family member fits within the complex whole (Cook & Kenny, 2004). I begin with a brief discussion of the theoretical framework that underlies the approach. This is followed by an extended presentation of the method and the type of information it provides. Finally, I present a case example of a family seeking treatment for an adolescent who is in the prodromal phase of psychosis.
