At the very beginning, therapists based their work on their previous experience, which was mainly psychodynamic, practicing individual or group therapy. Some therapists could

also rely on knowledge obtained while studying abroad or completing internships in centers where family therapy had been practiced longer. Gradually, after the professional literature was reviewed, training was completed in foreign centers, and cooperative relationships were developed with Yrjö Olavi Alanen (a Finnish psychiatrist whose study titled Schizophrenia—Its Origins and Need-Adapted Treatment played a significant role in the approach to therapy in Poland), MK0683 concentration GSI-IX molecular weight Professor Helm Stierlin (a German psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and systemic family therapist from Heidelberg University), and other significant figures in the field, the systemic family paradigm was incorporated into the clinical practice of the adolescent unit of the Krakow Psychiatric Department. It is important to emphasize that the person who introduced the family paradigm and working with families into clinical practice was Maria Orwid, along with her team. Within the framework of child and adolescent psychiatry that she founded, family therapy began to be applied and used in various contexts. In 1983, the Family Therapy Outpatient Unit was established. It was managed by Barbara Józefik and focused on family therapy for

children and adolescents. At the same selleck chemical time, family consultations were introduced as a standard procedure in the inpatient adolescent unit, and in 1988, the Home Hospitalization Unit, managed by Ryszard Izdebski, was founded to offer family therapy at patients’ houses. During the same period, in 1978–1979, Professor Irena Namysłowska, a psychiatrist from Warsaw, was trained in the USA at the Department of Family Therapy at the University of Virginia. She was trained in structural therapy by the American family therapist David Waters, who was a student of Salvatore Minuchin, a founder of the approach who was born in Argentina. After returning to Poland, Professor Namysłowska practiced family therapy at the Department of Psychiatry at the Warsaw

Academy of Medicine. Training programs for family therapy were also introduced, organized mainly by the Section of Psychotherapy 3-oxoacyl-(acyl-carrier-protein) reductase of the Polish Psychiatric Association. Professor Namysłowska obtained further training in 1985/1986, again in the US in systemic therapy at the Ackerman Institute. This training was made possible with the help of Donald Bloch, a physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, family therapist, and editor of Family Process and Family Systems Medicine, who introduced her to the staff of the Institute and allowed her to participate in many seminars and training sessions. Upon returning to Poland, Professor Namysłowska once again introduced state-of-the-art knowledge on systemic therapy to the Department of Psychiatry, along with one of the first one-way mirrors in Poland.