Am J Psychiatry 1980; 137:1523-1529
Copyright © 1980 by American Psychiatric Association
Assessing families in their own homes
P Steinglass
Assessment of the family in its own home provides important information
about the family's style of regulating its internal environment. The author
presents data from a study of families in which one of the spouses was
alcoholic. These families were observed at home on nine occasions over a
six-month period; the technique used, the Home Observation Assessment
Method, measured dimensions of family behavior associated with routines of
daily living. Dimensions of home behavior were highly correlated with
traditional clinical measures of psychiatric symptomatology, severity of
alcoholism, and family boundaries.
