Bridging Minds, Systems, and Relationships: Inaugural multidisciplinary international conference on Family therapy
By: Deepika Shaligram MD1, Abigail Ross PhD2, Michelle Rickerby MD3, Rajesh Mehta MD4, Noah Spector PhD5, Rishi Kapur MD6, Manijeh Daneshpour PhD7, Jaswant Guzder MD8, Rama Rao Gogineni MD9
1Child Psychiatrist, Co-Director of Boston Children’s Hospital Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program, Co-Chair AACAP Diversity & Culture Committee and Taskforce on Children, Families and Immigration
2 Social Worker, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania
3 Child Psychiatrist, Co-chair of AACAP Family Committee
4 Child Psychiatrist, Director of Psychotherapy Training, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program,Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters
5 Social Worker, Program Director of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute’s Mind Matters team
6 Child Psychiatrist, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa
7 Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, System-wide Couples and Family Therapy Director, Alliant University and Past-President of Family Process Institute
8 Child Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, family therapist, Co-Director Social and Cultural Division, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia
9 Child Psychiatrist, President, Association of Family Psychiatrists
A group of mental health professionals interested in advancing the sustainability, training, and research of Family Therapy for a new generation conceived the idea for a multidisciplinary conference Bridging Minds, Systems, and Relationships – Biopsychorelational Healing to showcase development of, innovations in, and applications of Family Therapy over time.
This international collaborative initiative in Family Therapy practice, training, research, and innovation held its inaugural virtual conference on April 4, 2026, under the auspices of three professional organizations – the Association of Family Psychiatrists, Family Process Institute, and the Family Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The theme for the conference was integrating systems perspectives of family work with the biopsychosocial roots of medicine for healing at the family level. Organized by Dr. Daneshpour, this was the first Family Therapy conference to intentionally involve both mental health therapists and medical specialists as collaborating presenters.
Each session of the conference comprised two family therapists, one a child psychiatrist and the other an allied health professional, to cover four salient topics. 1) Current Status of Family Therapy Education 2) Cultural Adaptations of Family Therapy for Immigrants and Refugees 3) Innovations in Family Therapy for New Service Models - Integrated Care, and 4) Navigating Challenges and Opportunities in Family Therapy.
The first session, Systemic & Relational Perspectives in Psychiatry and Therapy, led by Drs. Kapur and Spector, described how Family Therapy education has evolved over the years. They first detailed their curricular offering at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa as co-directors of their Family Therapy training program, and then invited other speakers to share their own training experiences with Family Therapy and the ways in which these experiences shaped their practice. This session concluded with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities within current Family Therapy training models, the influence of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requirements, technological advances (e.g., televisits), and other phenomena that have sparked creative adaptation and innovation.
The second session, From Loss to Resilience: Biopsychorelational Approaches with Refugee Families, led by Drs. Guzder and Mehta, explored the value of Family Therapy for displaced populations. This session highlighted the importance of cultural responsiveness when leveraging family systems and relational interventions for resilience building.
The third session, Integrated Care Models – From Theory to Practice, led by Drs. Rickerby, Ross, and Shaligram, explored innovations in applications of Family Therapy to new service delivery models across the care continuum, including deployment within child psychiatry access programs, integrated primary care, and comprehensive partial hospitalization programs. Dr. Shaligram described the use of narratives and other family therapy skills incorporated in a single session intervention during the child psychiatry evaluation in a child psychiatry access program. Dr. Ross described the adaptation of the Family Based Crisis Intervention (FBCI), to illustrate how a family therapy intervention can be integrated within primary care behavioral health models to reduce suicide risk among youth. Dr. Rickerby presented the novel Family Based Integrated Care intervention that she developed for medically complex youth in a partial hospitalization program.
The fourth session, Ethical, Cultural, and Generational Challenges in Collaborative Care, led by Drs. Daneshpour and Gogineni, examined common challenges in family work, namely, loyalty conflicts, generational value differences, and ethical dilemmas especially within multicultural and intergenerational family systems. This session emphasized the essential nature of collaboration between the team of health professionals – including mental health professionals - in today’s world of managed healthcare. Panelists identified concerns about fragmentation of care and parity of payment for marriage and family therapy with individual therapy, noting that individual therapy was reimbursed at higher rates than marriage and family therapy even though the latter is more complex as it involves care with two or more individuals. Panelists underscored the importance of family involvement relative to child and adolescent mental health, highlighting the fact that, in many countries, pediatric and family medicine specialists are the largest body of practitioners of family therapy skills in their daily clinical encounters.
The conference concluded with an all-presenters panel discussion and audience question-and-answer session. Over four hundred individuals registered for the conference, with a sizable number of trainees represented; attendees hailed from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and numerous countries in the Middle East and Asia, making it a truly global gathering of mental health professionals. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and indicated robust interest in establishing an annual interdisciplinary international conference to foster Family Therapy learning and development. Please stay tuned for the next iteration of this conference in the spring of 2027.
Reference
- Koven M, Shoychet G, Prime H. Why Family Assessments Are Key to Child Mental Health. JAMA Pediatr. 2026 Apr 1;180(4):355-356. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.5949.
- Shaligram D,Bernstein B, DeJong SM, Guerrero APS, Hunt J, Jadhav M, Ong SH, Robertson P, Seker A, Skokauskas N. “Building” the 21st century Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Acad Psychiatry. 2022; 46(1):75-81.
- Abou Seif, N., Ching, B. C. F., Billings, J., Argyriou, A., Pile, V., & Smith, P. (2026). A systematic review of global mental health service utilisation in young refugees and asylum seekers. BJPsych Open, 12(2), e76. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2025.10963
- Rickerby ML, DerMarderosian D, Nassau J, Houck C. Family-Based Integrated Care (FBIC) in a Partial Hospital Program for Complex Pediatric Illness: Fostering Shifts in Family Illness Beliefs and Relationships. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2017 Oct;26(4):733-759. doi: 10.1016/j.chc.2017.06.006. PMID: 28916011.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
The authors report no biomedical conflicts of interest.
This article represents the view of its author(s) and does not necessarily represent the view of the IACAPAP's bureau or executive committee.
