Andrea Wittenborn, Ph.D., and Kendal Holtrop, Ph.D., edited the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy decade review issue - the discipline's flagship journal - on the efficacy and effectiveness of couple and family therapy interventions. Wittenborn and Holtrop are professor and associate professor, respectively, in the Couple and Family Therapy Program in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University.
“It is our hope that this issue provides clinicians the tools they need to improve the mental health of people they treat in their communities,” Wittenborn said.
This once-in-a-decade review assesses the efficacy and effectiveness of couple and family interventions for conditions such as anxiety, depression, suicide, substance use, ADHD, child disruptive behavior problems, and relationship conflict.
“The empirical literature is constantly evolving and it can be difficult for clinicians to discern the best practices for improving mental health,” Holtrop said. “The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy decade review is recognized as the most reliable source of information on empirically supported couple and family interventions for mental health and behavioral problems.”
Holtrop explained that close relationships play a role in the development and maintenance of mental and behavioral disorders. Decades of research show that relationship dynamics can be changed or harnessed to alleviate mental health symptoms.
Improving relationship dynamics may also help to prevent the mental health of couples and families from deteriorating in the future. This issue includes 14 articles: an introduction, 12 articles that review the evidence of couple and family interventions for various conditions, and a capstone article on mental health disparities.
“Mental health conditions are the most common causes of disability in the world, yet most people do not seek help due to a number of barriers, including an uncertainty about where to turn,” Wittenborn said. “This issue offers up-to-date information on the most effective couple and family interventions and is freely available this year. This may reduce barriers to seeking help.”
This is intended to benefit a wide audience including researchers, clinicians, and students in couple and family therapy and other professions with a focus on mental health services. Other important stakeholders include policy makers, third-party payers, service sector administrators, and the general public.
“We hope that it inspires new research to continue to expand upon the already impressive evidence base for couple and family interventions,” Holtrop said. “This issue also offers valuable information for informing policy changes related to interventions for couples and families.”
This issue provides critical information about best practices for people presenting with various mental and behavioral conditions, and it is the culmination of three years of work. Wittenborn and Holtrop were invited to serve as the first female editors of the decade in review issue in January 2019. They quickly began developing guidelines for the methodology of the reviews, determining topics, and selecting authors. In Fall 2019, they reached out to highly recognized scholars to author the articles.
“We value diversity, equity, and inclusivity, so we encouraged authors to develop authorship teams diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, career stage, and other important identities whenever possible,” Wittenborn said.
They then asked authors to conduct comprehensive reviews of the empirical literature to determine the evidence-based couple and family interventions for specific mental and behavioral health conditions. Once articles were submitted, they facilitated the peer review process and provided their own evaluations of the articles. Each article was reviewed up to four times by at least four experts. They then worked with the production team at Wiley to prepare the issue for publication.
“Previous decade review issues have guided my own research and clinical practice for years, and it was personally rewarding to contribute to the longstanding history of this invaluable resource,” Wittenborn said.
For Holtrop, working on the special issue gave her the opportunity to help document the state of the research to help support spreading the word that couple and family relationship interventions can promote a number of positive outcomes.
“I was drawn to the field of couple and family therapy because the research evidence aligns with my own lived experience that relationships matter to our health and wellbeing,” she said. “This also means that the healing capacity of relationships can be harnessed to prevent and treat a variety of mental health and behavioral conditions.”
Both Wittenborn and Holtrop hope that this review issue will be helpful for the broader public.
“The past several months have been difficult for a lot of people, and many in the MSU community may be experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, child behavior problems, relational conflict, and other difficulties or seeing people they care about struggling with these issues,” Holtrop said. “We want people to know that there are evidence-based couple and family interventions available to treat these conditions. Hopefully this can help our community members to feel comfortable and confident seeking the help they need.”
To read the full issue, visit https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17520606/current.
***
By Katie Rose Frey