Episode #109: Learning from Family and Systemic Psychotherapy with Kate Meredith

Interviewer info

Lyssa Rome is a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, where she facilitates groups for people with aphasia and their care partners. She owns an LPAA-focused private practice and specializes in working with people with aphasia, dysarthria, and other neurogenic communication impairments. She has worked in acute hospital, skilled nursing, and continuum of care settings. Prior to becoming an SLP, Lyssa was a public radio journalist, editor, and podcast producer.

In this episode, Lyssa Rome interviews Kate Meredith about using concepts from family and systemic psychotherapy to help people with aphasia and their families.

Guest info

Kate Meredith is a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist, working for the NHS and in independent practice in South Wales. She is completing a Professional Doctorate in Systemic Practice.

Kate worked for 15 years as a Speech and Language Therapist, working with adults with acquired communication difficulties. Kate's dual training enables her to support families and individuals with the impact of these changes on family and social relationships. Kate has studied at University College London, King's College London and the University of Bedfordshire. Kate worked with Giles Yeates to publish Psychotherapy and Aphasia: Interventions for Emotional Wellbeing and Relationships (Meredith, Kate. H. and Yeates, Giles. N. 2020). Kate also presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association International Convention in November 2022.

Listener Take-aways

In today's episode you will:

• Describe the importance of narrative for helping families cope with aphasia.
• Understand how speech-language pathologists can use genograms and ecomaps to support their LPAA care.
• Learn why the way speech therapists talk about aphasia matters.

Edited show notes

Lyssa Rome

Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Lyssa Rome. I'm a speech language pathologist on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, and I see clients with aphasia and other neurogenic communication impairments in my LPAA-focused private practice. I'm also a member of the Aphasia access podcast working group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources.

I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Kate Meredith. Kate is a family and systemic psychotherapist, working for the NHS and in independent practice in South Wales. She is completing a professional doctorate in systemic practice.

Kate was a Speech and Language Therapist for 15 years, working with adults with acquired communication difficulties. Her dual training enables her to support families and individuals with the impact of these changes on family and social relationships. Kate has studied at University College London, King's College London, and the University of Bedfordshire. Kate worked with Giles Yeates to publish Psychotherapy and Aphasia: Interventions for Emotional Wellbeing and Relationships. Kate also presented at the ASHA convention in November 2022.

Kate Meredith, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad to be talking with you.

Kate Meredith

Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

Lyssa Rome

So to start with, I'm curious about your transition from speech language pathology, or speech language therapy, into family therapy. What led you to make that change?

Kate Meredith

So I loved working as a speech language therapist or a speech language pathologist, as you would say in the US. It was great. I mainly worked in a rehabilitation setting, and what that enabled me to see, from the off, was the changes to people's relationships. On a daily basis, I was witnessing people coming into the center, trying to figure out who they were in relationship to each other, and that got me really, really curious. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the ask that we put on partners and family members in those settings—so whether it's supporting people with toileting or washing, feeding or swallowing, there's so much change that takes place.

And it really made me think: What about the relationships? Are we asking about the change in relationships? Are we asking what it feels like for partners to have different roles, to have different aspects to the way they do their relationships? And as a speech language therapist, I was thinking: Okay, what does this person need in terms of their communication skills, what do they need on the ward? Do they need to be able to indicate whether they're hungry or thirsty or in pain? And all of that was important. But it also kept me thinking: What would matter most to me? If I were in this situation, if I had aphasia, if I was having difficulties with my communication, what would be the biggest impact for me? And it just kept coming back to relationships for me.

Now, I worked in the multidisciplinary team, with neuropsychologists and physios and OTs, nurses, healthcare support workers, doctors—great, great teams. But I wasn't sure that any of us really felt like we had the remit or the focus to think about people's relationships after brain injury.

When I was working in the community for a while, I started working with a neuropsychologist, who started asking questions about this with a couple that I was working with alongside him. And I said to him afterwards, "I loved those questions. I'm so glad you're asking those questions. I think about this all the time." And he said, "Well, I wasn't doing neuropsychology there, I was doing family therapy." So I started looking into it. And when I started exploring it, and when I got onto the course, straightaway, I thought, I think that speech and language therapists, speech language pathologists have got a really unique set of skills here that matches so well with the skills that are needed in family and systemic psychotherapy.

So starting the training, loved the training straightaway. And I always hoped that I'd be able to do something and brain injury with it, but then, when I found a job in family therapy, in a different context, actually, working with children, adolescents in mental health services, I kind of started down that direction, and love it. But I've really held on in my private practice, where I'm not working as a speech language therapist anymore. But most of my private practice work is with adults who have a communication disorder. And I find that so enriching. I just love it. And I also do a little bit of writing a little bit of presenting. And that's kind of where I got to here.

Lyssa Rome

It sounds like you very organically saw this connection between what families, people with acquired brain injuries and acquired communication disorders were dealing with, and how family and systemic therapy might be able to help them live better with their conditions. So I want to back up for a moment and ask you to define for us what is family and systemic therapy for, say, SLPs, who aren't familiar with that term?

Kate Meredith

Absolutely, because I wasn't either. I think it's more popular in certain contexts of healthcare than in others. So in the UK, it just wasn't in brain injury anywhere. So I'd never heard of it. There are different names for family and systemic psychotherapy—so some people call it systemic psychotherapy, some people call it family therapy, sometimes it's a mixture, which doesn't really help with the difficulties that people have in understanding what it is. But really what it is, is about helping people who are in relationships with each other, work together to achieve change. The idea being that change happens through relationships, rather than individuals just making a change that can that can affect everything.

The big principle of it is really that problems aren't located in people. Problems and people are not the same thing. People don't just have ownership or become the problem, they very often happen between people. So who takes responsibility for that change, if actually, the problem is happening between two people, or more than two people?

So family and systemic psychotherapy thinks about actually how relationships can support people, and how improving relationships can reduce problems and can reduce symptoms. So we're trying to provide a really safe space in family therapy and systemic psychotherapy, where people can communicate, they can make efforts to understand each other in a different way. We can think about strengths—it's very, very strengths based—but also about what the needs are, what the emotions are, and how people can be a resource for each other. So rather than thinking, you need to go and get this fixed, or you need this medication, it's actually: What can happen in the relationships that will bring about the change?

Lyssa Rome

That brings to mind a really interesting conversation that I was able to have, as part of this podcast, several episodes ago, with Dr. Marie-Christine Hallé, who really emphasized this idea that aphasia is a family thing, it's not something that just happens to the person with aphasia, and what you're describing, this idea of locating the problem, sort of outside of the person with with the brain injury and situating it within the family context, I think, is a really powerful way to think about it.

So you've been bringing these ideas from family therapy to speech language therapists, speech language pathologists, working with people with communication disorders. And today, our plan is to talk some more about some of these concepts from family or systemic therapy that can be useful for SLPs, who are working,