Assessing Family Relationships

Book excerpt: Assessing Family Relationships shows mental health professionals how to utilize the Family Life Space Drawing (the FLSD), a family assessment tool that incorporates information from multiple family members while building connections between the clinician and the client. In this manual, Theresa A. Beeton and Ronald A. Clark demonstrate the usefulness of the FLSD in both family and couple counseling. As a task-centered assessment tool, the FLSD enables an interactive and personalized process of counseling, which helps individuals to express concerns and information about themselves in an indirect and nonthreatening manner. Chapters are illustrated throughout with case studies and drawings adapted from the authors’ own clinical experience, and the manual offers an overview of the history of the FLSD, as well as where future research is headed. Providing a practical explanation of how to complete the FLSD process, Assessing Family Relationships will be highly relevant to couple and family therapists, as well as clinical social workers, who are interested in updating their practice with innovative family assessment research and techniques.