Family therapy with monogamous Nigerian families

The goal of therapy with the studied family is to enable both patients to solve their dependence-independence conflicts and ambivalence toward the mother and father respectively. Mother and father are in turn encouraged to resolve their own lingering parental attachments through separate sessions of communication therapy. This will enable them to come together in a more mature partnership, thus allowing their children to lead their own lives. This particular case study is representative of many such cases presented by the Western type of patient and some monogamous mixed types and illustrates dynamically how cultural conflicts may generate family conflicts. It illustrates that analytically oriented family therapy is useful in understanding and helping to solve the conflicts in these families. Family therapy helps to control the use of various treatment facilities by the patients. In the case presented here, the parents consulted a variety of indigenous healers during the course of treatment prior to family therapy. The authors would not have known this had they not instituted family therapy. It is very difficult to hide information in family therapy. Finally, family therapy is recommended as an effective form of psychiatric treatment which, subject to the availability of time and personnel, should be employed in the treatment of many psychiatric cases in Nigeria.