Family Therapy for Addiction & Substance Abuse

Therapy is an essential part of your recovery treatment program, at any level of rehab care. If you’re feeling overwhelmed about where to start, you’re not alone. One type of addiction therapy shown to be effective in treatment engagement, retention, and outcomes is family therapy. Having your family’s support can lead to long-term recovery. Without it, you are more likely to relapse.1

Learn more about family therapy, or contact our Kansas City drug and alcohol rehab to get started with treatment today.  

What Is Family Therapy?

Family therapy is a structured, therapeutic approach that brings you and your loved ones together with a licensed therapist to address how addiction impacts every member of the family, not just the person using substances. During these sessions, your therapist helps everyone understand addiction as a disease, explore family roles and communication patterns, and learn healthier ways to support recovery.²

Family therapy may involve the whole family together, or the therapist may meet with individual members or smaller subgroups when needed. The goal is to strengthen relationships, improve communication, and create a supportive environment that helps every family member heal and grow.²

Many people believe their substance use only affects them. It’s completely understandable to feel that way — but addiction often impacts the entire family system. According to the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, loved ones are deeply affected by a family member’s substance use, which is why treatment often expands to include the whole family.²

Family Therapy for Addiction

You may notice that at times, your family dynamics, like specific roles, relationships, and communication styles, don’t always encourage you to stop misusing drugs or alcohol. Family therapy sessions can help address these dynamics and make changes to support your recovery efforts better. Family therapy and substance abuse treatment help everyone understand addiction and the process of getting help. Then your loved ones can learn how to support you in your recovery journey.1

Family therapy should be part of your addiction treatment plan if you have family members ready and willing to participate. A licensed therapist will teach your family how to support the changes you make, as well as help them make changes within themselves. There may be some family members who act in ways that support your addiction. In that case, family therapy can help them understand how they enable your addiction and learn to prevent substance misuse from being passed down from generation to generation.

Through structured, family-based therapeutic interventions, your loved ones can make the necessary changes to support healing within the entire family.1

What to Expect During Family Therapy

Before you begin family addiction therapy, a licensed therapist must assess your family’s needs, strengths, history, resources, and issues that contribute to your substance use disorder. The results will help them create a personalized treatment plan, including the most beneficial treatment methods for your family. Your therapist leads therapy sessions, but the focus is on your family and getting them involved in your recovery.3

During the initial sessions of family therapy, your therapist will gather information about your family’s dynamics and identify your goals for treatment. They will help your loved ones understand how they affect your substance use and how your substance use affects them. Sometimes, your therapist may work with individual family members in one-on-one sessions, while at other times, they may meet as a group or subgroup.3

Your therapist will do their best to encourage communication and positive interactions, provide education on addiction and healthy family dynamics, and create a relapse prevention plan. Once everyone understands the treatment plan and goals, your therapist will begin using family-based counseling techniques to help your family reach your goals. The exact plan for each session will be tailored to the type of therapy and the specific setting.3

Types of Family Therapy

It is natural to wonder how your therapist can help you and your family. However, your therapist is trained to properly assess your family’s needs and choose an evidence-based technique to help all of you reach your goals. You may encounter several common types of family therapy during rehab.4

Structural Family Therapy

Structural family therapy (SFT) is based on the idea that your family has a unique structure or organization in how you interact with one another. It is a technique that helps you identify and restructure dysfunctional relationships. For example, your therapist can help your family rebalance structure and improve the hierarchy by setting healthy boundaries. It can also help your family appropriately react to changing demands.4

Strategic Family Therapy

Your family has unique problems that may not be fixable using standard problem-solving methods. In strategic family therapy (SFT), your therapist can help you and your family design an intervention to resolve your issues, using techniques that differ from those you have tried and failed in the past.4

Transgenerational Therapy

Addiction often affects multiple generations of a family, and long-standing patterns can be passed down over time. Transgenerational treatment for addiction focuses on family therapy and drug use issues from the past that affect family members in the present. Your therapist helps your family understand your patterns and develop skills to break them.5

Family Psychoeducation

Your family needs to understand addiction so they can properly help you in recovery. Psychoeducation is a therapeutic model that provides your loved ones with insight into the disease, teaches problem-solving skills, enhances communication, assertiveness, and crisis management. Your loved ones also get specific ways to help you prevent relapse.6

Relationship Counseling

Some relationships may hinder your recovery, while others may support it. Couples therapy can benefit you and your significant other. It is skills-based treatment that teaches you healthy skills to implement in your relationship. It can help you enhance your relationship, reduce relationship distress, improve communication, and achieve appropriate conflict resolution.7

Family Therapy Settings

Although family addiction therapy focuses on helping your recovery process, some of your family members may need to get help through other sources. Family therapy can take place in various settings.8

Family Recovery Groups

Family recovery groups are support groups for your family members. When they meet with other families who also have a loved one with addiction, they get support that isn’t offered through traditional family therapy. These groups are peer run and lead your family through education and support.

Family Therapy Sessions

Family sessions are when you and your family meet together with a licensed therapist who can help you work on specific family issues that impact the dynamics of the family, including mental health and substance abuse.

12-Step Facilitation Groups

You and your loved ones can attend Al-Anon, one of the most popular 12-step groups for families who have a loved one struggling with addiction. In Al-Anon, peer families run the meetings, following the original model of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

Family Therapy & Co-Occurring Disorders

If you have a substance use disorder and also have mental health symptoms, like anxiety or depression, you are not alone. Many people have what is known as a co-occurring disorder. Misusing drugs or alcohol can lead to unwanted mental health symptoms, and you might also use substances to cope with mental health symptoms you are already experiencing.9

When you treat both disorders at the same time, you reduce your risk of relapse. Because genetics and shared family environments can increase the risk for both mental health issues and addiction, family-based interventions become a key part of your recovery. Family therapy sessions can address these factors, as well as environmental and family dynamics that contribute to your co-occurring disorders.9

Benefits of Family Therapy for Addiction

When you and your family work together to help you maintain recovery, you will notice many benefits. Not only will everyone in your family be on the same page, but you will also be more engaged in treatment, motivated to make changes, prevent relapse and remain abstinent, reduce co-occurring symptoms, and strengthen family bonds.10

Family Therapy vs Individual or Group Therapy

Sometimes you need to learn more about yourself, discuss family issues, and substance use disorders in a private setting. You may want personalized support to explore your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as they relate to addiction. If so, individual therapy may work better for you.11

When you want to connect with others who have a substance use disorder, share experiences with peers, improve social skills, and boost your confidence in recovery, choose group therapy. When you want to improve relationships, consider family therapy to learn how to work together to solve problems and communicate more effectively.11

Family therapy and group therapy seem similar because they involve more than one person. However, the types of therapies, structure, and format can vary. Each type of therapy has advantages and disadvantages. Your treatment plan may include all three types, depending on your unique needs and family circumstances.

How to Get the Most Out of Family Therapy

It may seem awkward at first to be in a therapy session with your family. However, it is essential to be willing to engage and open up to receive the most effective help. What you get out of therapy depends on you and your family’s participation.

While there may be difficult conversations, you can all learn to forgive, be heard, and understand each other’s perspectives. You can discover your family’s strengths, learn healthy boundaries, and transform your family dynamics.10

It is also beneficial to work with a licensed therapist who is trained or has experience in both family and addiction therapy.10

Will Insurance Cover Family Therapy?

Under the Affordable Care Act, most individual and small-group plans are required to cover mental health and substance use disorder services as essential health benefits, and many plans must cover these services in the same way it covers medical and surgical care. However, coverage for specific services like family therapy can vary by plan and state, so it’s important to check with your insurance carrier for details.12

You can contact your insurance company to verify coverage amounts for family therapy, or verify your benefits with our team to get an overview of what treatment services your insurance plan will cover. 

Family Therapy for Addiction in Kansas City

If you enter treatment at Empowered Recovery Center in Kansas City, you are eligible to participate in family therapy. We have fully licensed therapists on staff with experience in addiction treatment to provide family therapy and substance use disorder treatment, along with many other therapies. You and your family will get care that truly reflects your unique needs and circumstances.

The first step in obtaining family therapy is to contact our rehab admissions team to begin the admissions process. This begins with an assessment to determine the rehab program that best suits you. We offer standard outpatient, intensive outpatient, and partial hospitalization programs, providing intensive clinical care while maintaining flexibility to manage your daily responsibilities. 

We accept a variety of payment methods to cover family therapy sessions and the cost of rehab, and we can verify your rehab insurance coverage online, allowing you to focus on other factors, such as receiving the help you need and deserve for you and your family. To begin the admissions process, verify your insurance coverage or contact us today.

Resources

1. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2021). The importance of family therapy in substance use disorder treatment. Retrieved on 11/4/2025 from https://library.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/pep20-02-02-016.pdf.
2. National Association of Addiction Treatment Professionals. (2025). Treatment methods and evidence-based practices.Retrieved on 11/4/2025 from https://www.naatp.org/treatment-methods-evidence-based-practices.
3. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2020). Chapter 4—Integrated family counseling to address substance use disorders. Retrieved on 11/4/2024 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571079/.
4. Jiménez, L., Hidalgo, V., Baena, S., León, A., & Lorence, B. (2019). Effectiveness of Structural⁻Strategic Family Therapy in the Treatment of Adolescents with Mental Health Problems and Their Families. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(7), 1255. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16071255. Retrieved on 11/4/2025 from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6479931/.
5. American Psychological Association. (2025). Transgenerational family therapies. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-44381-010.
6. Sarkhel, S., Singh, O. P., & Arora, M. (2020). Clinical Practice Guidelines for Psychoeducation in Psychiatric Disorders: General Principles of Psychoeducation. Indian journal of psychiatry, 62(Suppl 2), S319–S323. https://doi.org/10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_780_19. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7001357/.
7. Lebow, J., & Snyder, D. K. (2022). Couple therapy in the 2020s: Current Status and Emerging Developments. Family process, 61(4), 1359–1385. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12824. Retrieved on 11/7/2025 from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10087549/#famp12824-sec-0005.
8. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2020). Chapter 3—Family Counseling Approaches. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571088/.
9. National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Finding help for co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/substance-use-and-mental-health.
10. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2020). Chapter 1—Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Working With Families. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571084/.
11. Stewart, T. (2024). Individual, Group, and Family Therapies. Psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner program companion and board certification exam review workbook. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-60894-0_17. Retrieved on 11/5/2025 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385999456_Individual_Group_and_Family_Therapies.
12. Isola S, Reddivari AKR. (2023). Affordable Care Act. Retrieved on 11/1/2025 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK549767/.