Today I want to discuss another type of therapy I had never heard of until about a month ago, like EMDR (obviously, the conference I went to gave me a lot of new information!). The therapy I will describe today is called multisystemic therapy, also known as MST.
According to the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisystemic_therapy), MST is an intensive family focused and community based treatment program for chronically violent youth. MST was developed by the Family Services Research Center (FSRC) of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina. In 1996, MST Services and MST Institute was formed. MST Services is for-profit and distributes and supervises MST information. MST Institute is non-profit and sets quality assurance standards and monitors program implementation. Although the specifics of the therapy are not detailed here, it is easy to see why it was named “multisystemic” because of its focus on different systems encountered by the youth.
This is a very general overview, and MST still seems a little vague to me. Actually, when I heard the term “multisystemic therapy” I thought it would be about looking at all of the body systems to see how they work together to create health or disease. So, I was way off. And, like EMDR, I have never heard of anyone who has used MST. However, at the very least, it is good to know it is out there and possibly another option for youth, some of which might be struggling from depression or some other mental illness. Although I don’t know much about it, I like the idea of looking deeper and looking at systems instead of assuming the youth may be to blame for everything.
What do you think about MST? Do you need more information? Does its focus on systems sound appealing to you? Hopefully we will see MST become more beneficial as experience with it increases.