Family therapy programme on BBC1 tomorrow night

[Kitty]

Where I work, there's been talk of this programme called "I hate mum" which is on on tomorrow night. Apparently it shows family therapy at work, which might be interesting for some of you.

Here's the description from the Radio Times website FYI:

Documentary
I Hate Mum

Tuesday 09 February
10:35pm - 11:25pm
BBC1

Cathy realised she had a problem with her son Ryan when she found the words "I f***ing hate you mum" scrawled on notes in his room. Ryan is a grimly angry 16-year-old who has stolen from his mother and cannot be trusted in the family home on his own. Adam is ten and implodes into fits of rage at his mum Sharon, biting, hitting and snarling as she weeps in despair. Until the age of five, she sobs, "he was the perfect son". Both Ryan and Adam have been referred to a specialist child and adolescent mental health unit in Greenwich, London, that seeks to help families in danger of being torn apart by such conflicts. As we eavesdrop on sessions, and observe the raw nastiness of the boys' behaviour, you wonder just how much the presence of cameras encourages their bad behaviour. And of course none of this is pleasant viewing; watching Adam, his face contorted in loathing, kick his mother is distressing. As, in its way, is Ryan's allowing us occasional glimpses of the profoundly unhappy boy who's never come to terms with his parents' marriage collapse.

[daydreambeliever]

Did anyone else watch this? I did and am curious as to what other people thought - I think what the programme did well was give the general population a flavour of what family therapy might actually look like in practice, making it seem fairly friendly with the puppet chats and getting across the idea of using reflective conversations and ideas to create change. However, I got frustrated on behalf of the younger boy as I felt there seemed to be core underlying difficulties that weren't being assessed/ addressed, though of course it may well just be they weren't showing that aspect. The older boy seemed to me to be a familiar story and I really felt for him. What I found interesting was I empathised with the angry boys while my partner who watched it with me empathised with the mums - which made for some interesting perspective taking discussions!

[Rainbow-rano]

Just watched this on catch up. I also empathised with the boys more.

I know very little about family therapy, and so it was really interesting to see the use of puppets and the two way mirror, I had no idea it worked (or can work) like that. Were the family therapists psychologists? Does anyone know what sort of training they do?

I did find the program a little frustrating, as I felt it didn't really delve into any of the issues - maybe it was to do with time constraints and confidentiality, but it felt a little superficial. Like you daydreambeliever, I also felt that there seemed to be a lot of stuff going on that wasn't addressed. Was left wanting to know much more!