• CURRENT ISSUE  MAY / JUNE  2023   VOLUME 22, NO. 3

    Native Americans

FEATURES

Suffering In Silence: The Invisible Minority and How MFTs Can Help

As an MFT, you arrive in your office and begin an intake session with a new client. You see a woman in front of you. She tells you that she is in a relationship and feels that she doesn’t have much power in it. She tells you that she has made compromises in her relationship, such as giving up the freehold of her home, among other things, to still have access to disparaged resources and a place to live.
Jessica A. Lopez, MA, Eastern Bright Star

Essential Considerations: Medical Family Therapists’ Approach with Native Americans

It is a privilege to work as a medical family therapist (MedFT) at the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic. “Medical family therapy is a form of professional practice that uses the biopsychosocial model and systemic family therapy principles in the collaborative treatment of individuals and families dealing with medical problems”.
Gina Poisson, MS

Native American Behavioral Health Challenges

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the current total population of Native Americans in the United States is 6.79 million, about 2.09% of the population (2023). There are about 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States (World Population Review, 2023). Agencies like the U.S. Indian Health Service (IHS) aim for maximum tribal involvement in meeting the health needs of its service population, who live mainly on or near reservations and in rural communities, mostly in the western United States and Alaska.

Systemic World

An Unstoppable Teenage Life Force: Face to Face with a Class of Syrian 7th Graders

Several years ago, while I was working on a project in Lebanon, I came face to face with a class of Syrian 7th graders. The 7th graders had been displaced to Lebanon by the war taking place across the border. I had been brought to the school, and the nearby refugee camp where the Syrian children lived with their families, as a consultant family therapy “SME” – a “subject matter expert.”
Laurie L. Charlés, PhD

Systemic World

Trauma-informed Family Therapy: Systemic Treatment of Trauma of Child Refugees

Did you know? 41 percent of all forcibly displaced people are children? Although children account for just 30% of the world’s population, they account for 41% percent of all those who have been forcibly displaced (United Nations Children’s Fund; UNICEF, 2022). In a number that is difficult to fathom, nearly 34.15 million children were forced to leave their homes and countries due to human rights violations (United Nations High Council for Refugees; UNHCR, 2021).
Charity Somo, PhD and Laurie L. Charlés, PhD

NEWS FROM AAMFT
Departments

Perspectives

Did You Marry Your Sibling?

Perhaps you’ve never thought of it, but if siblings are relatively close in age, childhood was their first experience of living with someone of the same generation. In fact, the early childhood sibling relationship could be considered a laboratory for all subsequent (adult) relationships. Did they learn to fight cleanly, or did they counter-attack, withdraw, or use blackmail (like tattling)?
Karen Gail Lewis, EdD

Perspectives

Part 2 Working with the Sexual Cycle in Couples Therapy: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

In our first article, What Are Sexual Cycles and Why Work With Them, we presented an overview as an introduction to help couple clinicians work with the sexual cycle as intently as with the emotional cycle, and to forge the strongest bond in couples’ bodies, minds, and hearts. In this next article, we will explore exactly what the emotional and sexual cycles are, the different types of attachment styles, and how emotional attachment styles mitigate sexual attachment.
Laurie Watson, PhD and George Faller, MS

A Message from the President

Necessary Losses

I first read Judith Viorst’s book, Necessary Losses, when it came out in 1998, towards the early phase of my career. The idea that loss was necessary, not just an inevitable part of life, was somehow radical for me as a child of refugees, growing up with multiple losses of family, home, and history.
Silvia Kaminsky, MSEd

Noteworthy

Common Misconceptions About Portability

Easy licensure portability—it is something everyone in a licensed profession wants, but it is not always easily understood. And as AAMFT embarks on a strategic effort to expand licensure portability for the MFT profession, it has never been more important to understand this process and to correct misconceptions that often circulate about it.


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