25 years of systemic therapies research: progress and promise

Abstract

Objective: In this article we describe and assess the state of the science on systemic psychotherapies. In the quarter century since the first issue of Psychotherapy Research was published, considerable progress has been made. There is an increasingly solid evidence base for systemic treatments, which includes a wide range of approaches to working conjointly with couples and families. Moreover, there are exciting new developments that hold promise for explicating the dynamic processes of therapeutic change in couple and family systems.

Method: We begin by explaining how we view "systemic therapies" as different from individual approaches and then summarize what we have learned in the past 25 years about this set of treatments, how we have learned it, and what we have yet to learn.

Results and conclusions: We consider current trends in research on outcomes and change process mechanisms, and end with speculations about what lies ahead in the interrelated domains of systemic research and practice.

Keywords: couple and family therapy; family treatment; mechanisms of change; systemic therapy.