Games Couples Play: Group Dynamics with Couples within the Illness Trajectory
Sunday, 16 September 2007 - 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
presented by Lea Baider PhD

Target Audience: physicians, psychologists, nurses, caregivers, other healthcare team

Workshop Objectives:

1. To provide tools to the professional healthcare team on group interventions, through practical exercises, with couples/famiilies who are living within the illness context.

2. To convey knowledge to the professional healthcare team regarding interactions, conflicts and relationship modes, particularly as they pertain to couple/family confrontation with illness.

Workshop Description:

Couples and families will be studied as interactive systems. This implies that in order to understand modes of relationships as a concept, it is paramount to know how they function within a normative social system.

How do couples/families face issues such as decision-making, conflict resolution, mutuality, intimacy and communication, particularly those living within the illness context?

These issues will be practically demonstrated through group interaction.

Exercises will be designed by the participants to assist couples/families in need of reexamining and better understanding how they can confront dysfunctional and emotional situations. In addition, the group will learn how to examine numerous patterns of daily living reflecting how couples cope and adapt either to enhance their functional and emotional resources or to avoid any new process of learning.