J Korean Acad Fam Med.  1997 Feb;18(2):126-135.

Usefulness of Family Counseling

• Kim YS
• Kim HS
• Pahk YS
• Seonwoo S
• Park HS

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Family counseling is an essential part of family practice in which patients are cared in psychosocial dimension as will as in physical dimension and the family is dealt with as a whole unit. However, it is little applied in practice. The department of family medicine has made efforts to activate family counseling. This study was done to estimate the patients response on the effect of family counseling that we have performed, and to investigate what clinical problems counseling was held and in what situations the counseling was perceived to be useful by the patients. We hope this study will be useful to establish some useful data and ideas for the development of family counseling in family practice in Korea.
METHODS
The subjects of this study are 53 households who received family counseling at the department of family medicine from Oct. 1, 1994 to May 31, 1995. 64 households received counseling during this peroid, but 11 persons who could not be reached by the phone were excluded. Patients demographic charateristics, patients chief complaints, physicians assessrnent on the complaints and major prolems presented in the counseling sessions were identified from the medical records. Patients own estimation of the effect of counseling and the reasons for termination of counseling were inquired through the telephone interview. Finally the association between the usefulness of counseling and some factors was statistically analyzed.
RESULTS
Subjects were predominently women(84.9%), especially middle aged. The most common chief complaint was headache complained by 10 subjects (18.9%), and the second and the third were abdominal pain complained by 8 (15.1%) and chest discomfort complained by 7(13.2 %), respectively. The list of physicians assessment included depression(34.0%), physical symptom per se without any assessment(20.8%), family problem(15.1%), somatization(13.2%), and anxiety(9.45). More than half of the subjects(60.4%) had only one session, 26.4% two sessions and 7.5% more than 4 sessions. The most common problem presented in the counseling was marital conflict(28.3%), the second was trouble with in-laws(15.1%), and the third was chronic illness in the family(9.4%). 32.1% replied that the counseling was very helpful, 28.3% somewhat helpful, 17% little helpful, 20.8% never helpful, and 1.9% not sure. The session was experienced to be more useful in the group of duration of symptom less than 6 months, than in the group of longer duration(p<0.05), and in the group with motivation for counseling than in the group without motivation(p<0.05).
CONCLUSIONS
About 60% of subjects replied the counseling was useful to them. Symptom duration and patients motivation to participate in counseling showed significant association with the effect of family counseling.

MeSH Terms

Abdominal Pain
Chronic Disease
Counseling*
Family Characteristics
Family Practice
Headache
Hope
Humans
Interviews as Topic
Korea
Medical Records
Middle Aged
Motivation
Thorax