Meet Our Therapists
Family therapy brings families together to foster understanding, improve communication, and provide support for loved ones dealing with mental health challenges. When one family member struggles with a mental health disorder, it often impacts the entire family, leading to feelings of worry, frustration, and confusion.
Many families feel lost or uncertain about how to provide the right kind of support or communicate effectively. Family therapy helps bridge this gap, offering guidance on how to navigate these challenges while promoting healing for the whole family unit.
Contact us today at (610) 595-5517 to learn more about our mental health treatment services in Philadelphia.
What is Family Therapy?
Family therapy provides a nurturing and comfortable environment for the loved ones of someone with poor mental health. Each family member has a chance to express their emotions and opinions with the goal of everyone understanding each other better.
Family members of someone with a mental health disorder often do not fully understand their loved one’s illness. They may feel uneasy around them or unsure of how to offer help. When this builds up over time, it can cause a breakdown in the family unit. Family therapy gives everyone a chance to heal old wounds and rally around the person who is ill.
How Can Family Therapy Help My Mental Health?
Having a mental health disorder often leaves a person feeling alone and misunderstood. Family members who do not understand their loved one’s illness may come across as uncaring, impatient, or judgmental. When the family gathers in a group for therapy, the therapists can offer immense clarity to them so they better understand what their loved one is going through.
When someone with a mental illness like PTSD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, or others has a support system that understands them, they have an easier time improving their mental health. Family therapy helps each person understand why their loved one behaves and feels the way they do. This allows them to offer tangible support and honest communication without blaming them. As a result, the family members can relax more and focus on benefitting from the treatment they are receiving.
Types of Family Therapy
We incorporate family therapy into our treatment plan in a variety of ways.
Different steps include:
Identifying the Illness
Many family members think their loved one is faking their illness or don’t understand what they have. Family therapy puts a label on the disorder and teaches family members how it presents in their loved ones.
Talk Therapy
The therapist leads the family in discussions and observes how they interact with each other. This allows them to point out relationship issues and behaviors that may need adjusting.
Communication Skills
Families learn to make statements about how they feel and do not focus blame on others. They work toward resolving past disagreements while respecting each other’s feelings and experiences.
How Does Family Therapy at New Mind Wellness Work?
Our family therapy looks at the family as a unit made of independent parts that each has their own experiences and viewpoints. Because mental illness can cause difficulties in a family, we bring them together to smooth out the wrinkles and leave with a better understanding of each other.
Topics of discussion may include how each person feels and thinks about their loved one’s mental illness. The person with the disorder can speak openly about how it feels to live with their illness. This includes fears and dreams they have, ways they feel misunderstood, and how they wish the family operated as a unit.
Our family therapists check in with each family member to make sure they feel heard and validated as a result of the therapy sessions.
Benefits of Family Therapy
When people attend family therapy in Philadelphia, they receive benefits that work now and last into the future. Familial communication can break down quickly when someone has a mental health disorder. Family therapy can help by providing the following benefits:
- Providing improved communication skills
- Identifying co-dependent or passive-aggressive behavior
- Educating about the symptoms of the illness, and if it can be cured or must be managed lifelong
- Discussing how mental illness has impacted the family, both now and in the past with other relatives
- Realistic expectations about how healing from mental illness works and what it looks like
- When to offer solid support and when to step back and let the loved one do their own work
Meet Our Therapists
Each of our licensed therapists providing family therapy in Philadelphia is experienced in working with mental health disorders. They create a safe space where family members feel comfortable opening up and addressing their concerns.
Our therapists guide families through strategies to improve communication and rebuild connections. The goal is to help families come together, resolve conflicts, and offer better support for one another.
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Alyssa Lindenbaum
Executive Clinical Director
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Santino Pizzo
Primary Therapist
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Dawn Ramsey
Evening IOP Therapist
Our Mental Health Programs That Incorporate Family Therapy
At New Mind Wellness, we offer family therapy at all levels of care, including:
- Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP): During a PHP program, you attend treatment for about 6-8 hours each day for five days each week. This will include a mix of group and individual therapy sessions as well as life skills training and psychoeducation.
- Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP): After PHP, you can step down to an IOP program. During IOP, you’ll have a similar type of programming session with a more flexible schedule. That way, you can continue your treatment while you work, attend school, or take care of family.
- Outpatient Program: Our lowest level of care is a traditional outpatient program. This involves meeting with a therapist or in a group once or twice weekly. Each session will last only about one hour.
What To Expect During a Family Therapy Session
Family therapy sessions can vary based on your needs and those of your family members. However, most sessions will have some similarities in terms of structure and approach.
First, your family therapist will likely do a check-in with everyone to begin the session. This check-in may include discussing changes since the previous session or any new challenges that need to be addressed.
After checking in, your therapist will help you and your family work on the most pressing issues at hand. Depending on what is occurring among your family members, this may look different. However, some techniques can include role-playing, modeling healthy communication, discussing healthy boundaries, or resolving family conflicts.
Lastly, your therapist will wrap up the session to summarize what to work on between sessions. Your family therapist might even give everyone “homework” to practice new coping skills to discuss during the next session.