Marilyn Friedman defined family broadly as two or more persons joined together by bonds of sharing and emotional closeness who self-identify as a family. This broad definition includes a variety of diverse relationships that extend beyond the traditional nuclear family. The function of the family is to nurture and care for individual members; to teach them about their roles, values, and beliefs; and to socialize them to culture and society. The family is a dynamic system of interrelationships among interdependent members who are influenced by changes within the family system and their environment.

Family psychoeducational interventions are strategies for teaching families coping behaviors to improve their responses to illness and situational and developmental stressors and for providing anticipatory guidance to decrease anxiety to promote health, family ...