The Research Program at The Family Institute at Northwestern University is organized around two areas:

• The process and determinants of how people change in psychotherapy
• Anxiety and mood disorders over the life course, within the context of the family

Research work on the first foci, titled the Psychotherapy Change Project , is dedicated to illuminating the process of client change and therapist intervention from a systemic and integrative perspective in individual, couple and family therapy. As part of this project, The Family Institute has developed two proprietary systems for tracking client change and providing feedback to therapists during psychotherapy: the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC) and the Integrative Therapy Session Report (ITSR). Click on Psychotherapy Change Project at left to read more about this research.

The Family Institute's second research foci is anxiety and depression ("the so-called “internalizing” disorders). These are the two most common groups of mental disorders with substantial public health impact. They are also the two most common disorders in The Institute's patient population. Consistent with the The Family Institute's unique systemic orientation, we organize this psychopathological focus on anxiety and depressive (mood) disorders within families over the life course. We are particularly interested in understanding these disorders in children, adolescents, adults and older adults, as well as in understanding the contribution of other family members to their etiology, maintenance and resolution. The overarching clinical goal of this research is to develop more effective and longer lasting treatments for anxiety and mood disorders in families over the life course. To read more about this area of research, click on titles of specific anxiety/depression projects at left: Generalized Anxiety Disorder; Depression, Relationship Distress and Couples; and Parental Depression/Conflict and Young Children.