"Don't lock me out": life-story interviews of family business owners facing succession

This qualitative study used a grounded theory methodology to analyze life-story interviews obtained from 10 family business owners regarding their experiences in their businesses with the goal of understanding the complexities of family business succession. The grounded theory that emerged from this study is best understood as a potential web of constraints that can bear on the succession process. Coding of these interviews revealed four key influences, which seem to have the potential to facilitate or constrain the family business owner's approach to succession. Influence 1, "The business within," captures intrapsychic dynamics of differentiation and control. Influence 2, "The marriage," addresses how traditional gender roles shape succession. Influence 3, "The adult children," examines the role of having a natural (accidental, organic, passively groomed) successor. Influence 4, "The vision of retirement," captures the impact of owners' notions of life post-succession. Family therapists frequently encounter family systems in which the family business is facing succession. Even if succession is not the presenting problem, and even if the business owner is in the indirect (rather than direct) system, this research reminds clinicians of the importance of the family's story about the family business. Therefore, clinical implications and recommendations are included.     

Collaborative helping maps: a tool to guide thinking and action in family-centered services

This article highlights "disciplined improvisation" as a metaphor for community-based work with multi-stressed families. It introduces Collaborative Helping maps as a tool that both helps workers think their way through complex situations with families and provides a structure to support constructive conversations between workers and families about challenging situations. The article illustrates this map through a clinical vignette and uses interviews with workers to highlight ways in which the map can both enhance worker thinking and support constructive conversations between workers and families about problems that could easily divide them and lead to polarization and escalating tension.     

Developing an outcome-based assessment for family therapy training: the Rochester Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (ROSCE)

This paper addresses a growing need for cost-effective, outcome-based assessment in family therapy training. We describe the ROSCE, a structured, evidence-informed, learner-centered approach to the assessment of clinical skills developed at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The ROSCE emphasizes direct observation of trainees demonstrating clinical competencies. The format integrates both formative and summative assessment methods. It can readily be adapted to a wide variety of educational and training settings.     

Automatic shifts of attention in the Dimensional Change Card Sort task: Subtle changes in task materials lead to flexible switching

Two experiments tested a hypothesis that reducing demands on executive control in a Dimensional Change Card Sort task will lead to improved performance in 3-year-olds. In Experiment 1, the shape dimension was represented by two dissimilar values (stars and flowers), and the color dimension was represented by two similar values (red and pink). This configuration of stimuli rendered shape more salient than color. In Experiment 2, attentional weights of each dimension value were manipulated by using two versus four values to represent the dimensions of shape and color. The results indicated that increasing saliency of the postswitch dimension (Experiment 1) and reducing attentional weights of individual dimension values (Experiment 2) lead to a marked improvement in the postswitch sorting accuracy in 3-year-olds.     

Mother and father adjustment during early parenthood: the roles of infant temperament and coparenting relationship quality

We explored how parent gender, infant temperament, and coparenting dynamics worked together to shape mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms, stress, and parental efficacy during early parenthood. We were interested in the coparenting relationship as a context that shapes how parents respond to their infant's temperamental qualities. Participants were 139 couples who had recently given birth to their first child. Parent reports of temperament were collected when the infant was 4–8 months old and reports of coparenting and parent adjustment were collected at 13 months. Two-level random intercept models revealed interactions between temperament and coparenting, highlighting the family system as a context for how men and women adapt to their parenting role. There was little evidence for mother–father differences in these associations.     

The effect of language cues on infants' representational flexibility in a deferred imitation task

Twelve- and 15-month-old infants who received simple verbal cues at encoding and retrieval exhibited superior representational flexibility on an imitation task compared to infants who did not receive those cues. Verbal cues can help early-verbal infants overcome perceptual dissimilarity and express knowledge in novel situations.     

Reproductive behavior and personality traits of the Five Factor Model

We examined associations between Five Factor Model personality traits and various outcomes of reproductive behavior in a sample of 15 729 women and men from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) survey. Personality and reproductive history was self‐reported in adulthood (mean age: 53 years). High extraversion, high openness to experience, and low neuroticism were associated with larger number of children in both sexes, while high agreeableness and low conscientiousness correlated with larger offspring number in women only. These associations were independent of marital status. There were also more specific associations between personality and timing of childbearing. The findings demonstrate that personality traits of the Five Factor Model are systematically associated with multiple reproductive outcomes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Multi‐Family Group Intervention for Adolescent Depression: The BEST MOOD Program

Depression is the most common mental disorder for young people, and it is associated with educational underachievement, self‐harm, and suicidality. Current psychological therapies for adolescent depression are usually focused only on individual‐level change and often neglect family or contextual influences. The efficacy of interventions may be enhanced with a broader therapeutic focus on family factors such as communication, conflict, support, and cohesion. This article describes a structured multi‐family group approach to the treatment of adolescent depression: Behaviour Exchange Systems Therapy for adolescent depression (BEST MOOD). BEST MOOD is a manualized intervention that is designed to address both individual and family factors in the treatment of adolescent depression. BEST MOOD adopts a family systems approach that also incorporates psychoeducation and elements of attachment theories. The program consists of eight multifamily group therapy sessions delivered over 2 hours per week, where parents attend the first four sessions and young people and siblings join from week 5. The program design is specifically aimed to engage youth who are initially resistant to treatment and to optimize youth and family mental health outcomes. This article presents an overview of the theoretical model, session content, and evaluations to date, and provides a case study to illustrate the approach.     

The Effectiveness of Functional Family Therapy for Adolescent Behavioral and Substance Misuse Problems: A Meta‐Analysis

A systematic review of published and unpublished English language articles identified 14 studies containing 18 comparisons between functional family therapy (FFT) and another condition in the treatment of adolescent disruptive behavior and substance use disorders. In 11 of these comparisons, assignment to conditions was random, while nonrandom assignment occurred in seven studies. For both random and nonrandom comparisons, separate meta‐analyses were conducted for subgroups of studies depending on the type of comparison group used. Data from studies of untreated control groups (CTL), treatment as usual (TAU), and well‐defined alternative treatments (ALTs) were analyzed separately. Effect sizes from these six meta‐analyses were as follows: random assignment FFT versus CTL (k = 3, d = 0.48, p < .01); random assignment FFT versus TAU (k = 3, d = .20, ns); random assignment FFT versus ALT (k = 5, d = .35, p < .05); nonrandom assignment FFT versus CTL (k = 2, d = .90, ns); nonrandom assignment FFT versus TAU (k = 2, d = .08, ns); and nonrandom assignment FFT versus ALT (k = 3, d = .75, p < .001). These results provide support for the effectiveness of FFT compared with untreated controls and well‐defined ALTs, such as cognitive behavior therapy, other models of family therapy, and individual and group therapy for adolescents.     

Mentalizing Family Violence Part 2: Techniques and Interventions

This is the second of two companion papers that provide an overview of mentalization‐based concepts and techniques when working with the seeming “mindlessness” of intra‐family violence. The focus of this paper is on general mentalization‐oriented approaches and specific interventions that aim to (1) disrupt the non‐mentalizing cycles that can generate intra‐family violence and (2) encourage the emergence of patterns of family interactions that provide the foundation for non‐violent alternatives. Various playful exercises and activities are described, including the taking of “mental state snapshots” and “selfies” in sessions and staging inverted role‐plays, as well as using theatrical masks and creating body–mind maps and scans. These can make “chronic” relationship issues come alive in session and permit “here and now” experiences that generate a safe context for mentalizing to take place. At the core of the work is the continuous focus on integrating experience and reflection. Without acute awareness of the thoughts and feelings occurring in the sessions, mere reflection is not likely to enable change. By increasing mentalizing in the family system, family members’ trusting attitudes grow, both within and outside the family.