ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of intensive family-focused therapy (IFFT), a team-based, outpatient model of family treatment developed by the author for children and adolescents with serious mental health conditions. Strategies, interventions, and clinical techniques, as well as frequency and length of treatment, are discussed. The ways in which temperament interacts with the environment are critical to our understanding of childhood mental illness. Bidirectional social influences exist not only between the parent and the child or adolescent, but also between the child and three other relationship subsystems: siblings, peers, and school. IFFT views the family, not the treatment providers, as the single most effective mechanism of change in a child's life. The role of the therapist is simply to facilitate positive change in the family system by improving communication and problem-solving skills, reducing conflict in the home, and teaching parents behavior-change strategies that work. Ultimately, this approach prioritizes improving family functioning and reducing problematic behavior in the child or adolescent. IFFT also seeks to identify the situational variables that are negatively impacting or influencing the child, and then disrupting or mitigating them.
