Master of Medical Marriage and Family Therapy
The MedFT program will be located at CitySquare in Dallas, TX and students will complete the large majority of their clinical internship hours with the urban poor who are served by CitySquare. Students will receive education and training in the culture of poverty, cultural sensitivity, and culturally competent therapy, as they become embedded in the CitySquare community and serve those who might be considered “the least of these."
Master of Medical Family Therapy
The Department of Marriage and Family Therapy at Abilene Christian University first began offering the Master’s of Marriage and Family Therapy (MMFT) in 1978. The MFT program received its initial accreditation from the Commission on the Accreditation of Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) in 1983 and has maintained continuous accreditation with the most recent renewal occurring in January of 2012. According to COAMFTE staff, ACU’s program was the only program to receive accreditation without conditions in its cohort. Over the past six years, approximately 20% of program graduates have continued on to PhD programs. COAMFTE has set two minimum program standards that must be upheld: (1) The program must graduate at least 50% of its students within the advertised length of the program and (2) At least 70% of program graduates must pass the National Licensing Exam. Over the past six years, the MFT program has graduated 94% of entering students within the advertised two years of the program, and 87% of graduates have passed the National Licensing Exam.
As the MFT faculty have envisioned possibilities for the future of the MFT program at ACU, the most promising option for expanding the influence of the program and for offering a unique graduate school experience to students was a Medical Family Therapy program in partnership with CitySquare based in Dallas, TX. According to Linville, Hertlein, and Prouty Lyness (2007), medical family therapy is defined as:
- An approach to health care from a biopsycho-social-spiritual perspective, informed by systems theory, spanning across a variety of clinical settings where: (1) the patient’s interpersonal relationships are believed to play a key role, and (2) collaboration exists between the family therapist and other health care practitioners. (p. 86)
A degree in Medical Family Therapy would include traditional MFT courses with additional courses emphasizing illness and disability across the lifespan, collaboration with healthcare systems and medical doctors, and focused internships in a medical setting.
Helpful Resources:
This program is pending final approval by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC).
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