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Furthermore, you should develop a set of questions to ask yourself and your relatives. This is simply understanding what you are looking for, and you can do this by deciding on how many generations you need to represent in your genogram. What is the reason for creating a genogram? Always start by asking yourself this question because by knowing the purpose, you then know the next step. Therefore, here are what to do before creating a genogram.ġ)ĝecide your purpose of making a genogram These things are key factors as well as core builders of any professional genogram. The fact is, you can’t just go ahead and create a genogram without first doing or knowing certain things. Part 2: What to Do before Creating a Genogram In the genogram example below, the genogram could explain Michael's close friendship with Ann, Paul's hostile against Magan, Max's conflictual relationship with Vivian, Edison, and Sara's harmony. Namely, a genogram goes deeper into revealing family information among all individuals. Unlike a traditional family tree, a genogram allows the user to visualize hereditary patterns and psychological factors that punctuate relationships. It is also named a McGoldrick–Gerson study, a Lapidus schematic, or a family diagram. Wikipedia defines a genogram as a pictorial display of a person's family relationships and medical history. In simple terms, they help understand an individual's family relationships by visualizing patterns and psychological factors affecting them. This is because they help create an interactive picture of a person’s family relationships and history, which is essential in the medical field. So, when it comes to studying or tracking a family history, a genogram is an ideal representation diagram to use. Notably, this growth in popularity has been realized majorly in the medical field.
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First developed in the 1980s by Monica McGoldrick and Randy Gerson in family therapy and clinical psychology settings, genogram has since gained more popularity.
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