The last decade, there has been notable progress towards family engagement in the treatment of individuals with different mental health disorders. This progress is partly fuelled by the deinstitutionalization process where care is provided in the home context, along with the patient and family rights movement. Additionally, increasing evidence shows that family engagement leads to lower relapse rates, reduced psychiatric symptoms, and improved socioeconomic outcomes for common psychiatric disorders. This development is  reflected in most clinical and multidisciplinary guidelines (NICE guidelines, Family Reflex) advocating the importance of informing and supporting family members and involving families in treatment and care planning. 

Several studies around families within the Department of Head and Skin - Psychiatry, for which the current funding is being requested, fit fully within this evolution: a) Family accommodation in OCD (Hannelore Tandt, PhD student; Qualitative interview study about family accommodation in patients with OCD and their family members; RCT: group CBT vs family group CBT; qualitative study of therapeutic processes in the family CBT), b) family presence in ECT (Nele Van de Velde, PhD; qualitative study regarding family presence in ECT, systematic review regarding family presence, RCT family presence in ECT), c) partner involvement in psilocybin assisted psychotherapy in TRD (Cisse Geleyn, systematic review psilocybin assisted psychotherapy, feasibility study psilocybin assisted psychotherapy, qualitative study regarding partner involvement), d) family functioning in eating disorders (Nele De Schryver; PhD; SRM study regarding attachment and psychological needs within families with eating disorders), e) effects of group family therapy in schizophrenia (Mirjana Selakovic, effects of the MFT on pos. and neg. symptoms in schizophrenia), e) other topics: perinatal mental health in partners and international survey study ivm family engagement in forensic psychiatric settings.