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AAMFT Summer
Institutes for Advanced Clinical
Training
August
10-14, 2008
Vancouver,
Washington
Systems Therapy for Military Families
R. Blaine Everson,
PhD
With the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, clinicians
are seeing a growing number of clients and families who are
part of the military establishment. This is true not only near
military installations, but well beyond as large numbers of
reservists are called into active duty. Family therapists may
see parts or all of military families in private practice,
within a military mental health setting, in community
agencies, or in veterans benefit programs.
Military
life, especially in times of deployment and combat engagement,
presents arguably the most stressful scenarios families can
face. Separation, parental absence, financial strain,
isolation, physical injury and PTSD are but a few of the
factors leading to marital strife, disruptive adolescent
behavior, and stress-related health problems. The value of a
systems-based approach to the health and well-being of
military families has become a prized commodity within the
military healthcare community.
Improving our understanding of military family issues and how
to provide adequate care for them is a must. This Institute
will focus on applying our existing systemic skill set to help
adults, children and couples in the military. At the same
time, it is important to know about job opportunities for MFTs
in this area, and how to gain visibility for oneself as a
therapeutic specialist with military families.
Participants will learn about:
-
unique and challenging aspects of family therapy within
military culture
-
assessing, diagnosing, and planning treatment for military
families
- the
impact of multiple deployment cycles on military family life
-
applications of systems therapy to unique problems within
military families
-
contextual factors that create resistance to change within
families in the military system
-
working with children and adolescents as the focus of family
treatment
-
helping families cope with combat experiences
-
systemically treating secondary traumatic stress
-
facilitating transitions into civilian life at the end of
military service
-
finding job opportunities to work with military families
Course Schedule
Monday August 11- Thursday August 14, 2008
8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each day
This course
provides 20 hours of continuing education.
R.
Blaine Everson, Ph.D.
is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Georgia and a
Clinical Member of the AAMFT. He has written and lectured on
the lives of military spouses and their children before,
during, and after combat-related deployments. He has studied
the parent-child relationship in the long-term absence of a
spouse, and co-authored a chapter on play therapy with
military children in Nancy Boyd-Webb’s most recent edition of
Play Therapy with Children in Crisis. He is the author
and editor (with Charles R. Figley) of the forthcoming
Families Under Fire: A Handbook for Systemic Practice with
Military Families. Dr. Everson was previously in practice
in Hinesville/Ft. Stewart, GA where he worked exclusively
applying and teaching a family systems model with military
spouses, children, and service members in all branches of the
armed forces and National Guard. He is currently in private
practice in Athens, GA and is an instructor in the Department
of Child and Family Development at The University of Georgia.
His recent focus is on the transition of veterans and their
families from military settings to civilian life.
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