Bridging Conceptual Frameworks: A Systemic Heuristic for Understanding Family Diversity

Family psychologists face the challenge of finding a new way to capture the uniqueness of diverse families and at the same time have a unified and common way to think about how families function if we are to broaden research and improve practice. Understanding how to "match" effective evidence-based treatments (EBTs) to families is one of the major barriers to moving effective family treatments into community settings (Sexton et al., 2012). The field of family psychology does not yet have a unifying heuristic to explain family functioning, which makes it difficult to know which interventions fit which families, which models are most useful for which group, or how to assess the problems that exist within family relational systems. This article considers how we might develop a systemic approach to understanding the diversity of families with whom family psychologist work. Our goal is to identify the need and suggest a direction for the development of a unifying systemic model that will focus on how families function and the processes and structures that promote and support their daily functioning in a way that helps the field embrace the diversity of family forms. We consider how systems theory embedded within family psychology might be part of a new framework to help bridge the constructs of distinct categories. Finally, we consider the contribution that a new model would make to further improve the outcomes of the EBTs in Family Psychology. The articles that follow in this special section illustrate these concepts within diverse family types and two different EBT models.