The use of a double-blind drug trial in family therapy to demedicalize a problem

A family therapy approach to a problem that had led previous clinicians to diagnose and treat a child as 'hyperkinetic', is described. The resistance to change that the preceding diagnosis had inculcated, is described. A method of overcoming this resistance by active involvement of the family in a double-blind trial of the drug treatment, was devised and used concurrently with a structural form of family therapy.