Institute For Career Research

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS ARE TRAINED TO HELP FAMILIES, COUPLES AND individuals – at all ages and from all walks of life – confront and cope with their personal problems. In a single day, they might be presented with the following caseload:
A gay teenager and his parents, who are having a difficult time accepting his homosexuality.
An unhappily married couple who are trying to decide if their marriage is worth saving.
A father, already burdened with financial difficulties, who has recently suffered a job loss.
A young couple struggling to help their adopted daughter who has a history of prior sexual abuse.
A blended family – with a baby on the way and four children from prior marriages – who are stressed to the limit. Marriage and family therapists differ from other mental health professionals in that they practice solution-focused, family-centered treatment. The course of treatment is generally brief and is designed with an end in mind. Twelve sessions is the average, according to a recent survey of therapists.
Marriage and family therapists believe that individuals and their problems must be seen in context, and that the most important context is the family. They address a wide range of relationship issues within the context of the family system. Their goal is to help their clients achieve more satisfying and productive relationships. Marriage and family therapists also treat individuals in one-on-one sessions and, in fact, about half of the treatment provided by marriage and family therapists is one-on-one, with the other half divided between marital/couple and family therapy, or a combination.
Marriage and family therapy is recognized by the US federal government as the fifth core mental health profession, along with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses. Currently, 48 states and the District of Columbia regulate the profession, requiring a license or certification to practice. It takes many years of education and hard work to become a licensed marriage and family therapist. You need, at a minimum, a master's degree, which requires about two or three years to complete, after you graduate from college. Some go on to earn a doctoral degree, which typically requires another three to five years. Moreover, many hours of supervised clinical practice are required both during the course of your studies and after graduation, in order to be eligible to sit for the licensing examination.
The majority of marriage and family therapists eventually go into private practice. This provides them with flexible work hours, the freedom to be selective about their clientele, and the option to specialize. But it also requires business and marketing skills, as well as covering the expenses of running an office. Alternative work settings include hospitals, hospice programs, inpatient facilities, employee assistance programs, community mental health centers, schools, rural clinics, business and consulting companies, health maintenance organizations, social service agencies, prisons, universities and research centers. A career as a marriage and family therapist is both satisfying and demanding, and not everyone is well suited for it. It takes a special kind of person who can spend every day listening and responding to people’s problems with the right mix of compassion and detachment. Distance yourself too much and your clients won’t believe that you really care about them; become too emotionally involved in their problems and you'll burn out very quickly.