• CURRENT ISSUE  VOLUME 24, NO. 3

    May/June 2025

FEATURES

Helping Teens Heal from Eating Disorders: Where Family Support, Education, and Recovery Intersect

For families navigating the complexities of an adolescent’s eating disorder diagnosis, treatment decisions often come with difficult trade-offs—including the disruption of their child’s academic progress. School interruptions can heighten a teen’s resistance to treatment, increase family stress, and create barriers to long-term recovery.
Courtney Anderson, MA

Aging out of Therapy: Unique Barriers for the Elderly Accessing Mental Health Services

Aging brings unique challenges in how we experience aspects of everyday life. Maintaining one’s health or receiving adequate care for health concerns is often a sign of independence and autonomy. However, what if the same challenges that are characteristic of older age are also barriers to receiving support?
Denise Williams, PhD

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy: Relational Healing in Couples and Families

Positive relationships and social connection are essential for human flourishing and thought to be key for long-term happiness, longevity, and wellness. However, utilizing evidence-based systemic therapies alone may not be the solution for everyone, and psychedelics may provide an innovative way to facilitate relational healing.
Jennifer Cahill, PhD

Psychogastroenterology: A Beginner’s Guide for Mental Health Clinicians

Over 60 million Americans suffer from gastrointestinal disorders (GI), yet only about 25% receive treatment for their symptoms. Common manifestations include acid reflux, bloating, bowel irregularities, nausea, abdominal pain, and vomiting. These symptoms stem from a complex interplay of risk factors, including obesity, dietary choices, eating patterns, dysregulated stress responses, mental health challenges, physical inactivity, and sleep disturbances.
Jerrod Brown, PhD, Jeremiah Schimp, PhD, Shelley Mydra, DMFT, Jennifer Sweeton, PsyD, & Leanne Skehan, DCN

Outcomes Framework for Supervision: The Acid-Test

After a century of psychotherapy supervision and over half a century of supervision research, what do we know empirically about the contribution of psychotherapy supervision to patient outcomes (Watkins, 2011; Watkins, 2020; Callahan & Watkins, 2018)? According to reviews conducted by Watkins (2011; 2020), we still don’t know much. This was the conclusion of Watkins after his initial review of 30 years of psychotherapy research (2011).
H. Charles Fishman, MD, Misti Sparks, PhD, & Violeta Kadieva, PhD

NEWS FROM AAMFT
Departments

A Message From the President

Shaping Tomorrow: Your Role in AAMFT’s Strategic Journey

At the recent AAMFT Leadership symposium, one of the speakers implored the audience, “This is not a time to stand on the sidelines; get involved!” I want to add to this important admonition and say that we need to get involved and we need to spend our time prioritizing those things that are most important.
Adrian Blow, PhD

Ethics + Legal

Where are the Ethics of Ethical Non-Monogamy?

While often perceived as a modern and avant-garde practice, non-monogamy is far from new. Across cultures and throughout history—including religious texts, indigenous traditions, and communal arrangements—forms of non-monogamous relationships have long existed.
Danna Abraham, PhD, Afarin Rajaei, PhD, Monica Whitlock, PhD, and Heather Warren, BA

Noteworthy

Recap of Leadership Symposium in San Diego, CA

The leadership development program is specifically designed to cultivate leadership excellence and structured to facilitate dynamic interactions with fellow trailblazers and thought leaders, enabling attendees to confront and surmount the unique challenges and prospects that emerge in the professional journey.

Perspectives

Weight Loss Medicine Isn’t Enough: Tackling Anti-fatness as a Systemic Therapist

Anti-fatness is a pervasive function of society. It dwells in the outermost layer of society’s systems and encroaches on each inner level, carefully harming everyone along the way. By the time people with larger bodies encounter explicit anti-fatness face-to-face, they have already accrued the brunt of implicit anti-fatness that has increased their marginalization.
Emani Sullivan, MS, Karlynn Sievers, MD & Tonya Cook, PharmD

Perspectives

Reimagining Resistance: An Invitation for a Systemic Exploration in MFT Supervision

The construct of resistance is frequently discussed during marriage and family therapy, yet it is often addressed without being located in a systems-oriented framework.
Danna Abraham, PhD & Afarin Rajaei, PhD

Perspectives

Neuronutrition: An Introduction to an Important and Complex Topic

The field of neuronutrition is an ever-evolving holistic, integrative, and interdisciplinary field of study.
Jerrod Brown, PhD, Bettye Sue Hennington, PhD, Tiffany Flaten, MEd, Jeremiah Schimp, PhD, & Jennifer Sweeton, PsyD

Perspectives

Embodiment & Equine Therapy: Anorexia Nervosa

Equine therapy helps develop mindfulness in clients as “horses are masters of being in the moment.” Mindfulness brings us into the here and now, so that we are truly able to show up and be in the moment.
Jennifer Cahill, MBA

Perspectives

Shifting Worldviews on Excessive Technology Use with Systemic Approaches

In today’s digital landscape, the pervasive presence of technology brings unique challenges to family dynamics, necessitating a reevaluation of traditional norms and values. As a therapist specializing in marriage and family dynamics, I’ve witnessed firsthand the profound impact of excessive technology use on familial relationships.
Ezra Lockhart, PhD


FTM is a connector to and from diverse family therapy practice, policy, supervision, and research leaders.


—Angela Lamson, PhD, LMFT


With cutting-edge and relevant articles, the FTM is the place I find practical systemic information.


—DeAnna Harris-McKoy, PhD


The magazine is great because it shows what other remarkable things my fellow colleagues are doing in the field.


—Sheldon Jacobs, PsyD, LMFT