How Does MDFT Work

Healthy Families are the Best Medicine for Youth

MDFT Transforms Lives by Intervening in Four Connected Domains:

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Our therapists use a comprehensive approach by meeting:

 

  • Individually with the youth

  • Individually with the parents/guardians

  • Together as a family

  • Together with youth, the family, and community influences

Interventions are integrated and coordinated within and across these four domains. Just as problems overlap, MDFT facilitates changes in each of these domains to encourage changes in all the others. Sessions are conducted from one to several times per week over the course of three to six months.

MDFT Goals

 
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For Youth:

  • Improve self-awareness and enhance self-worth and confidence

  • Develop meaningful short-term and long-term life goals

  • Improve emotional regulation, coping, and problem-solving skills

  • Improve communication skills

  • Promote success in school/work

  • Promote positive friendships and social activities

  • Reduce substance misuse, delinquency, and problem behaviors

  • Improve and stabilize mental health

 
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For Parents:

  • Strengthen parental teamwork

  • Improve parenting skills & practices

  • Rebuild commitment to parent-youth emotional bonds with youth

  • Enhance parents' well-being and self-care

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For Family:

  • Improve family communication and problem-solving skills

  • Strengthen emotional attachments and feelings of love and connection among family members

  • Improve everyday functioning of the family unit

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For Community:

  • Improve family members' relationships with school, court, legal, workplace, and other neighborhood social systems

  • Build family member capacity to access needed resources

MDFT has been researched and implemented
in substance use and mental health treatment settings, among youth in juvenile justice, drug court, and child welfare settings, and across cultures and countries as a culturally-responsive and gender-sensitive approach in urban and rural settings with a diverse population.