AAMFT, AFTA, CAMFT, IFTA, and more: A primer on MFT associations

by

There are at least six major professional associations that cater to marriage and family therapists. Each of the organizations has great value, and each focuses its energy a bit differently, so it is useful to know about them to determine where you want to make professional connections and what activities you want your member dues to support. Of course, for each organization, there is not room here to cover all of their member benefits; I would strongly suggest following the links to each organization’s web site to learn more about what they have to offer.

Note: The logos here are, of course, the trademarks of their respective owners. Like the rest of this post, they’re there to be informational, and to connect you to the organizations’ sites; they are not meant to indicate that the organization endorses this blog, or vice versa.

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy is the national professional association for MFTs. It has led the successful push to get MFT licensure in all 50 states, and now is working in support of legislation that would add MFTs to Medicare and improve employability in schools. Strengths: AAMFT is particularly known for its successes in advancing the field through research, education, and training. These efforts include publishing the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy; publishing Family Therapy Magazine, which focuses each issue on a particular clinical or advocacy topic; putting on a large annual conference; supporting the AAMFT Approved Supervisor designation and related training; and accrediting graduate programs in MFT through its accrediting arm, COAMFTE. AAMFT also has divisions dedicated to more localized efforts in US states and Canadian provinces. (Full disclosure: I’m on a consulting contract with AAMFT, focused on California educational and policy issues.)

The American Family Therapy Academy is a smaller, invitation-only organization dedicated to advancing systemic thinking and systemically-oriented services for families. AFTA produces an Annual Conference and publishes a special-topics journal, the AFTA Monograph Series. Strengths: The depth and quality of discourse within the organization is strengthened by the invitation-only membership model. The organization’s strong commitment to systemic work is evident.

The International Family Therapy Association is dedicated to supporting the work of MFTs overseas and training practitioners around the world to deliver culturally-appropriate family-based services. IFTA publishes the Journal of Family Psychotherapy and sponsors the World Family Therapy Congress, an international conference of family therapy researchers and practitioners. Strengths: The Congress is well-renowned for its ability to bring together international leaders in the field who otherwise may never make personal contact. The organization’s focus on culturally-appropriate care is also important when applying treatments to different populations than those for whom the treatment was initially developed.

The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists is an independent organization (that is, separate from AAMFT and its California Division) dedicated to supporting MFTs in the state. That by itself makes the organization one that is important to the profession overall, since about half the MFTs in the country, by licensure, live in California. CAMFT produces its own magazine, The Therapist, which focuses largely on legislation, employment, and compliance issues. CAMFT also puts on an annual conference. Strengths: CAMFT has historically focused its energy effectively on state-level legislation and advocacy, and on local connections through its 29 local CAMFT chapters throughout the state.

The International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors is a division of the American Counseling Association. ACA considers marriage and family therapy to be simply one of many forms of counseling, and accredits MFT programs as specialty counseling programs. IAMFC publishes its own journal, which CAMFT has recently begun distributing to its members as the two organizations seek additional ways to collaborate. Strengths: IAMFC is seeking to grow in scope and influence through collaborative efforts, including its collaboration with CAMFT and with the National Credentialing Academy.

The National Council on Family Relations is an interdisciplinary organization focused on research and policy as they relate to family life. NCFR administers the Certified Family Life Educator credential, publishes a number of journals including family-studies leader Family Relations, and puts on its own annual conference. Strengths: The CFLE credential crosses state lines, and the organization’s focus on applied research and public policy have made it a go-to source for practitioners and policymakers alike.

Each of these organizations has a lot to offer. Students in particular can benefit from them, as they each have remarkably low membership costs for those currently in school. Professional associations advance the field on many levels, improving the quality of our training, the effectiveness of our clinical practices, the employability of MFTs, reimbursement practices, and public policy. I encourage you to find the ones that will be most valuable to you, join them, and then invest your time and energy in them. Being just a number in an organization is fine and has benefits; being an active voice and an advocate for your profession is even better.

Recapping the 2010 AAMFT Annual Conference

by

There was a lot to talk about at the just-concluded 2010 AAMFT Annual Conference in Atlanta, where more than 1,700 clinicians and researchers from around the country gathered to share the latest ideas in treatment. This year’s theme was “Marriage: Social and Relational Perspectives,” and this year’s jump in conference attendance was well-deserved. Hitting some of the high points:

* For my money, Stephanie Coontz should be a keynote speaker every year. Last year, she talked about time-use studies and the changing face of American families. This year she gave a lively summation of her great book, Marriage: A history, putting modern marriage into a larger context. Next year’s theme will be “The science of relationships,” and I hope there’s a way to bring her into that, too. The woman could make the history of the paper bag engaging.

* The last plenary speaker, John Witte Jr., was not quite as advertised, but started great dinner-table conversation. He had promised a speech on “Marriage, Religion, and the Law,” which could have been wonderful — a more conservative counterpoint to the arguments others made in favor of same-sex marriage. Ultimately, he barely mentioned religion at all. Which was too bad — as I’ve argued before, there is a reasonable debate to be had about the role of religion in marriage (and specifically whether religious therapists should refer out same-sex couples they do not feel they can work with supportively). I really, really wish someone could put together a respectful dialogue on the topic. But for what it turned out to be, Witte’s speech was valuable. His proposals for legal-system remedies to the changes in family formation and dissolution in the US were far-fetched, but started some great conversations. We all want parents to be responsible for their choices, but how do you have a legal system that best balances supporting families in need with punishing those who are irresponsible? I loved the variety of ideas about that just at my own dinner table; I’m sure similar discussions were happening at plenty of others.

* We’re making great strides in the effective treatment of military veterans and their families. MFTs are ideally trained to help keep military marriages and relationships strong (or to end them more peacefully when necessary), and there was a whole track at the conference dedicated to just this kind of work. The timing could not have been better: finally, after years of struggle with the implementation process, the Department of Veterans affairs has a job description specifically for marriage and family therapists.

It’s always refreshing to renew old connections and make new ones at the conference, and I especially enjoyed the opportunity to present with some of my faculty colleagues from the Alliant MFT program. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who made the conference such a success. I can’t wait for next year!

VA posts MFT job description

by

Images from the first Gulf War. Visit www.va.gov for complete information.Images from the first Gulf War. www.va.gov

It’s been a long time coming, but the Department of Veterans Affairs has posted its job description for marriage and family therapists. According to that document, the category applies to “VA Medical Centers, Community-Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs), Vet Centers, Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) offices, and [the] VHA Central Office.” The educational requirements demand that one graduated from a COAMFTE-accredited program; just one more reason accreditation matters. (If you’re wondering, the VA’s Professional Mental Health Counselor category requires a CACREP-accredited degree.)

For those of you familiar with VA hiring practices, MFTs now become part of the Title 38 Hybrid category, and entry-level MFTs will be brought in at salary grade GS-9. (While salaries vary by specific location, in California this is likely to mean starting salaries in the $50s/yr, judging by social worker positions at the same salary grade.) More experienced MFTs will be at GS-11 (mid- to upper-$60s and up), and supervisors at GS-12.

Keep an eye on www.aamft.org for additional information, and the VA’s job search site for new openings as they arise.

Great new books on modern marriage and divorce

by

Quick, true or false: Half or more of the couples getting married this year will eventually divorce. We hear that statistic over and over and over again. It’s wrong. The divorce rate has been in significant decline since the 1970s. By the tenth year of marriage, by which time we know that more than half of those who will ever divorce have already done so, only 16% of college-educated women who married in the 1990s had divorced. That represents a drop of almost a third since the 1970s; 23% of college-educated women married in that decade had divorced by the tenth year of marriage. (The trend runs parallel for those without a college education, whose divorce rates are consistently just a few points higher.)

Marriage is changing in the US — and in many ways for the better. The divorce rate is definitely declining. Young people are putting off marriage, for a variety of reasons (some of which are likely economic). And therapists’ knowledge of how to strengthen weak marriages grows stronger by the day. This research, on marriage itself as well as how to improve it, is the focus of Tara Parker-Pope’s excellent For Better. Parker-Pope, who writes the Well blog for the New York Times, condenses current family-studies and family-therapy data into a well-paced, eminently readable and optimistic portrait of modern American marriage. Simply put, the book is fascinating. Parker-Pope is certainly a gifted writer; she is able to accurately communicate the finer points of research with a light touch, never coming across as wonky or technical. She also includes a number of self-tests researchers have designed to assess marriages, which makes the book even more valuable on a therapist’s shelf.

For those couples who do divorce, they should know that modern divorce is changing, too. When Americans divorce, they are more likely than people anywhere else to remarry, and they tend to do so more quickly. Even those who do not marry are more likely to bounce from one relationship to another in the US, forming the framework for Andrew Cherlin’s book, The Marriage-Go-Round. Cherlin makes a compelling case that the US is different from the rest of the world in how we think about marriage and divorce. Even better, he offers a compelling explanation, rooted in our nation’s social and religious history. It too is a great read. (It also can be occasionally frustrating; Cherlin briefly dissects the half-of-all-marriages-end-in-divorce myth early in the book, only to repeatedly reinforce it later. Parker-Pope does a much more detailed job of demolishing that myth.)

Ultimately the two books are both worthwhile on their own, but they are even better in combination. For therapists wanting a comprehensive and digestible understanding of the choices Americans make in marriage, divorce and the spaces in between — and how we can improve those choices — read them both.

That infidelity-and-income study? Don’t believe it.

by

A recent study, presented at an American Sociological Association conference to a fawning media reception (NPR / Salon), tells us that men who make less than their wives or live-in girlfriends are five times more likely to cheat. It’s bogus. Here’s why.

While commentators have been stumbling over themselves to determine what the study’s findings mean about gender, marriage, and society, no one seems to be bothering to notice that the study itself appears pretty useless. The major conclusion, linking income and infidelity, has a number of problems, not the least of which is that everyone — myself included — who wasn’t at the conference is relying on a press release and subsequent media reports about it. Such reports are notoriously unreliable, often drawing ideas from generous and/or speculative interpretations of the results rather than the study itself. That said, here are three of the reasons I’m particularly skeptical:

  1. Do the math. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, upon which the study is based, followed about 9,000 individuals — surely a healthy sample size. But the infidelity study examined only those who were married or with a live-in partner for more than a year, which is a much smaller subset. And of those, only seven percent of men and three percent of women actually fessed up to cheating during the study’s six-year period. So, let’s be generous and say that two-thirds of the NLSY group met the relationship-status criteria (n=6,000). And we’ll presume that roughly half are of each gender (3,000 men and 3,000 women). That leaves us with about 210 men who have fessed up to infidelity in this survey. Of those, it is not clear from the media reports how many were in situations where the male earned less than his partner; other recent research suggests about a third, or fewer than 80 of those reporting infidelity, were in such a relationship. And remember, we’re being generous because we do not have the actual numbers. To be sure, 210 male cheaters is still a decent sample, and it could be enough to draw meaningful conclusions about links between infidelity and income (among other factors). But it still is not a lot. In fact, it probably is a lot less than the number of participants in the survey who actually cheated. Remember…
     
    Updated 2010-08-20: LiveScience.com (which has more details on the methodology, and as an added bonus, commentary from Stephanie Coontz) is reporting that only 3.8 percent of men, and 1.4 percent of women, admitted to cheating in the study. That’s not exactly true; on average, 3.8 percent of men and 1.4 percent of women admitted to cheating in any given year of the six-year study, at least according to the press release.

  2. …People lie. A major income discrepancy in the relationship may be a good reason for men to simply be more honest about their cheating. Sure, you could argue, if the wife/girlfriend finds out then the gravy train ends. But if the man is in a relationship for the money, and not emotionally committed, why on earth would he lie to an anonymous survey about his cheating? There is little incentive to, and there is no cognitive dissonance to resolve over telling the truth. On the other hand, if he is emotionally engaged, and is in the relationship for reasons other than money, he may find it safer (and more palatable) to hide any previous infidelity. If all that sounds awfully speculative, well, that’s the point. People lie on studies like this, and we do not always know who will be most likely to lie or why. Yet commenters (and, too often, the researchers themselves, as seems to be the case here) treat the findings as truth in spite of their huge flaws, and then seek to divine an explanation.

  3. Account for other factors, like age, education, and religion, and the income-infidelity link vanishes. That inconvenient fact is actually in the press release, but of course, no one is paying attention to it. Does earning more than your man make him more likely to cheat? the chatterers are asking. In a word, no — the income issue appears to (at best, and even this has big holes) correlate with, but not be a cause for, cheating.

The trouble with any study of undesirable behavior that relies on self-reports is that it is impossible to know what we’re really studying — the behavior itself, or the act of reporting it. Only a more carefully (and expensively) constructed study could parse that out. In the meantime, move on. Nothing new to see here.