Medical family therapy with couples facing infertility

Abstract

“Medical family therapy” is an approach to psychotherapy with patients and families experiencing a medical illness or disability such as infertility. It assumes that no biomedical event occurs without psychosocial repercussions, and that no psychosocial event occurs without some biological marker. Medical family therapy interweaves the biomedical and the psychosocial by utilizing a biopsychosocial/systems theory, with collaboration between medical providers and family therapists as a centerpiece of the approach. This paper illustrates medical family therapy with couples experiencing infertility and facing the challenges of infertility treatment. Strategies are described that enhance the patient's sense of agency and the family's sense of communion during what tends to be a lengthy medical crisis.