Factors affecting the choice of a family psychosocial intervention. A retrospective study from an experience of 8 years

Introduction. Systematic studies have shown that the integration of pharmacological with psychosocial family treatments produces an improvement in clinical outcome with reduction of relapses, number and duration of hospitalizations. Aim. In the present study we wanted to investigate the presence of a possible association between household characteristics and the choice of joining a particular type of family intervention. Materials and methods. For this purpose, we performed a retrospective reconstruction of the therapy of a sample of 82 families treated with psychosocial family interventions for a period of 8 years. This sample was divided into 3 subgroups according to the type of family intervention performed (sporadic consulting, psychoeducation to term, continuous psychoeducation). Socio-demographic and clinical variables, motivations for the access to treatment and the relationship with the service of the families were investigated by reading the medical records, the use of PSICHE and the administration of a questionnaire that we created for this purpose. Results. Type of pathology and clinical severity of the patients were not related to the choice of the type of psychosocial intervention performed by the family. On the contrary, considerable importance in choosing the type of psychosocial family intervention - in terms of personal involvement, duration of the same and shared objectives - have both the presence of comorbidity for substance use disorder between patients, and the role of the operator sending, who cannot disregard the objectives to be pursued and their consistency with the overall purposes of the intervention.