What do you say when people ask you, "what is a marriage and family therapist?" In my role as IAMFT President, I am called upon frequently to represent the profession of marriage and family therapy. In recent months, I have spoken about MFT to legislators, clients, lawyers, physicians, insurance executives, and other mental health professionals. I'm pleased to find an increasing understanding of the commonalities that MFTs have with the other mental health professions, the uniqueness of MFTs, and their importance in the mental health service system. In discussing who MFTs are, I've become convinced that the words I choose are very important, and I have been paying attention to the way I speak about the profession. Below, I've written some of the words I often use. How do these words compare with the ones you use? I'd like to know. Please send me e-mail at bja@niu.edu, write me at School of FCNS, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, or call at 630-232-7457.

Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) is the title of a profession whose mission is to assist individuals, couples, families, and groups in resolving a wide continuum of problems including mental, emotional, behavioral and interpersonal disorders. MFTs work with individuals, couples, whole families, parts of families, and groups toward these ends. Historically, when the profession of MFT emerged, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers were already skilled in methods for working with individuals in therapy. MFTs added to these skills a new group of methods for treating mental, emotional and behavioral disorders (conjoint therapies), and a new way of conceptualizing these disorders (systemic or relational therapies). [Conjoint therapies provide methods for working with two or more clients present in therapy sessions who are in significant relationships with each other outside the therapy context. A systemic therapy is any therapy which assumes that, in order to treat any particular problem, you must understand the interpersonal system in which the problem arises.] MFTs found that many of the methods that were useful in treating interpersonal disorders were also useful in treating mental, emotional and behavioral disorders, and that often, interpersonal and individual disorders existed at the same time.

Because systemic thinking and conjoint therapies were unique contributions of MFT, some people began to equate MFTs with these contributions, assuming that MFTs think only systemically, and use only conjoint methods. While systemic thinking and conjoint methods do constitute particular areas of expertise for MFTs, in practice, MFTs are generalists, or "family practitioners," who use a wide range of theories and methods to treat a wide range of mental, emotional, behavioral and interpersonal disorders, and who are knowledgeable about when to refer for specialized treatment. The average MFT works with individuals exclusively in about half of his/her cases, and treats a wide range of presenting problems including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, marital problems, parent/child problems, and many others.

In recent years, many other mental health professionals have incorporated systemic thinking and conjoint methods into their practices. (One doesn't have to be a licensed MFT to think systemically and use conjoint methods). However, MFT maintains its uniqueness historically as the profession which cultivated systemic thinking and conjoint therapies, and currently as the profession from which most innovations in these areas emerge.