Family Resilience Framework

This article presents an overview of a family resilience framework developed for clinical practice, and describes its advantages. Drawing together findings from studies of individual resilience and research on effective family functioning, key processes in family resilience are outlined in three areas:

• family belief systems,
• organizational patterns, and
• communication/problem-solving

Clinical practice applications are described briefly to suggest the broad utility of this conceptual framework for intervention and prevention efforts to strengthen families facing serious life challenges.

"Most studies focused on individuals who thrived despite a parent's mental illness or maltreatment and tended to dismiss the family as hopelessly dysfunctional and to seek positive extra-familial resources to counter the negative impact. Thus, families were seen to contribute to risk, but not to resilience."

I wonder if this is why - related to family engagement - we give up before we even get started? How many times is "enough" when it comes to reaching out to parents of children with mental illness or pyschosocial problems?