Scaling Up Family Therapy in Fragile, Conflict-Affected States.

This article discusses the design and delivery of two international family therapy-focused mental health and psychosocial support training projects, one in a fragile state and one in a post-conflict state. The training projects took place in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. Each was funded, supported, and implemented by local, regional, and international stakeholders, and delivered as part of a broader humanitarian agenda to develop human resource capacity to work with families affected by atrocities.

Getting comfortable as "fish out of water": using qualitative research methods training to enhance the technical capacity of family therapy trainees.

This article describes a qualitative research methods training project undertaken in a COAMFTE-accredited family therapy master's-level program. Graduate students were trained to collect research data for a qualitative study on the resilience of families displaced to the United States because of war and politically motivated violence in their country of origin. By involving trainees in a research project with refugees, the project was intended to address a gap in clinicians' training, specific to the refugee population (Miller, Muzurovic, Worthington, Tipping, and Goldman, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2002; 72: 341).

Producing evidence of a miracle: exemplars of therapy conversation with a survivor of torture.

This article illustrates the termination sessions of a therapy case with a survivor of torture, displaced to the United States after facing targeted persecution in his home country. Using methods of qualitative research in the naturalistic paradigm, I examine the case of the client's torture rehabilitation experience through his descriptions and evaluation of the therapy process. Excerpts from the dialogue of the final 2 sessions, during which we discussed the client's past and future through the miracle question, are highlighted in this article.

Disarming people with words: strategies of interactional communication that crisis (hostage) negotiators share with systemic clinicians.

This qualitative study examined the interactional communication strategies used by law enforcement officers during a hostage-taking incident at a high school. The research involved analysis of the negotiation conversation between police crisis (hostage) negotiators and a hostage taker who entered his former high school to take revenge on a teacher. A condensed version of the talk was micro-analyzed with the actual negotiators from the incident, using ethnographic and Interpersonal Process Recall interviewing methods.

Overcoming bias toward same-sex couples: a case study from inside an MFT ethics classroom.

This article illustrates a teaching case in which a marriage and family therapy (MFT) trainee learned to develop cultural sensitivity toward same-sex couples despite religious beliefs that put her at risk of discriminating against that population. The case took place during a marriage and family therapy ethics course in the spring of 2003. From two first-person perspectives, the authors illustrate the processes that facilitated the student's change, addressing the class activities, discussions, and pivotal moments of teaching and learning that promoted the student's cultural competency and helped her to resolve this personal and ethical dilemma.