Systemic thinking on family health promotion / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

In the systemic perspective, family is a system capable of self-organization, which possesses enough resources and ability to solve its own problems. To promote family health, the systemic therapists are required to consider each family member’s opinions and construction to certain problems, and assist them to discover and activate their own resources as well. Promoting family health also requires members to actively develop a sharing pattern within the family, exert the positive role of family rules, develop an authoritative parenting style so as to promote the mental health of children. Family members should ensure the clear and open boundaries between different subsystems, and maintain the stability of subsystem of the husband and wife especially. Furthermore, family members in different subsystems should make reasonable trade-offs and choices corresponding to different situations in order to both minimize conflicts and maintain the satisfying function of the family system. A healthy and ideal intimate relationship is interpreted from the systemic perspective of " evolvable, changeable, associative" on the core of " intimacy, passion and commitment" . The relationship will enhance partners' personal growth, in which the partners can not only examine its dynamic variations together but also deepen the understanding and acceptance of each other under the circumstances of bilateral original families and living environments. In addition, a healthy conjugal relationship has higher requirements such as " kinship" , commitment to two families of the couple and the children, and balancing the benefits between core family and original family.