Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT)

Introductory Workshop Part One

May 6 & 7, 2025, 8:30am - 12:15pm CST each day
Virtual via Zoom
Fee: $35
Continuing Education Hours: 6.5
Note: Interested participants must be practicing in Wisconsin

Course Description

Attachment Based Family Therapy is a manualized, empirically informed family therapy model specifically designed to target family and individual processes associated with adolescent suicide and depression. ABFT emerges from interpersonal theories that suggest adolescent depression and suicide can be precipitated, exacerbated or buffered against by the quality of interpersonal relationships in families. Tested with diverse families, including low- income and minority families, ABFT is a trust-based, emotion-focused psychotherapy model that aims to repair interpersonal ruptures and rebuild an emotionally protective, secure-based parent–child relationship.

Treatment is characterized by five treatment tasks:

Reframing the therapy to focus on interpersonal development
Building alliance with the adolescent
Building alliance with the parents
Facilitating conversations to resolve attachment ruptures
Promoting autonomy and competency in the adolescent.

ABFT is a flexible yet programmatic approach to facilitating these processes. Although not prescriptive, the treatment manual provides a clear 'road map' of how to accomplish this "shuttle diplomacy" thereby allowing these profound and reparative conversations to occur quickly in therapy. Therapists are taught to rapidly focus on core family conflicts, relational failure, vulnerable emotions and the instinctual desire for giving and receiving attachment security.

During the introductory workshop, lecture and therapy tapes are used to provide an overview of the model including theoretical foundation and clinical strategies of ABFT.

At the completion of the workshop participants should be able to:

Explain the theoretical foundation of ABFT.
Discuss the empirical support for ABFT.
Describe the five treatment task structure of the model.
Explain how to organize therapy around interpersonal growth rather than behavioral management.
Identify the strategies used in the five treatment tasks.
Describe what a relational rupture is.

About the Trainer

Suzanne Levy, Ph.D.

Dr. Suzanne Levy is an internationally renowned licensed clinical psychologist and Co-Developer of ABFT. She is the CEO and Co-Owner of ABFT International Training Institute. Formally she was the Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives and Training for the ABFT Training Program at Drexel University. ABFT is a manualized, empirically informed and supported, family therapy model specifically designed to target family and individual processes associated with adolescent suicide and/or depression. Since 2007, Dr. Levy has been conducting ABFT training workshops and supervision for therapists nationally and internationally. She has presented regionally, nationally, and internationally on ABFT, emotion coaching, child and adolescent therapies, resilience, adolescent depression, adolescent development, and adolescent substance use. Along with her colleagues, Drs. Guy and Gary Diamond, Dr. Levy has written the first book on ABFT, Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Depressed Adolescents published by the American Psychological Association.