O Modelo de Falloon para intervenção familiar na esquizofrenia: Fundamentação e aspectos técnicos

Behavioural interventions have been used with families where there are severe mental health difficulties. Behaviour Family Therapy (Falloon and colleagues) is an effective family intervention for schizophrenia with clear-cut aims. Evidence regarding outcome has been established, either in clinical terms (reduced relapse and hospitalisation rates), psycho-social factors (better social and occupational functioning, reduced family burden) or economic terms (reduced cost of service). It’s a family intervention delivered to individual families within a ‘strengths framework’ - the approach is psychoeducational, and there is a focus on the family acquiring specific coping skills. Behavioural psychoeducational interventions are practiced worldwide, and seems helpful in a wide range of mental health conditions. In Portugal, training in this kind of intervention began in 1996, although with scarce impact in regular clinical practice. Implementation difficulties are shared with other forms of family work and this undoubtedly deserves specific high-quality research.