The Family Cycle: An Activity to Enhance Parents’ Mentalization in Children’s Mental Health Treatment

ABSTRACTThis article introduces the Family Cycle, a therapeutic activity informed by attachment theory, family systems theory, and current literature on reflective functioning. The Family Cycle helps clinicians and families create a narrative about a child’s psychopathology that considers complex trauma and/or adverse childhood experiences. It reframes observable dysfunctional phenomena as behavioral sequelae of more deeply rooted emotional loss. After the theoretical underpinnings of the Family Cycle are laid out, we describe the implementation of the Family Cycle within the context of an intensive home-based, family-focused intervention created at the Yale Child Study Center, the Intensive In-Home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service (IICAPS). The Family Cycle provides a teachable clinical framework to facilitate the treatment of families with complex, multigenerational trauma.