Therapeutic Alliance in Family Therapy for Adolescents with Epilepsy: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Nineteen adolescents with epilepsy and their parents completed all phases of the study. Families were assigned randomly to either issue-specific single-family counseling (IFCM) or to a multi-family psychoeducational group (PG). Three issue-specific scales were used to evaluate problem improvement. A modified version of the Working Alliance Inventory assessed therapeutic alliance. No overall differences in alliance were found between IFCM and PG. However, IFCM adolescents reported significantly stronger alliance than those in PG. Alliance remained stable from sessions three to six. Finally, there was a trend for alliance to correlate positively with therapy outcome for teens, but not for mothers.