Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT)

The Marriage and Family Therapy focus area is the oldest continuously accredited MFT doctoral program in the nation, attracting students from across the country and around the world. Individuals, couples, families, and communities face numerous challenges. Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) offers potential solutions that can enhance the quality of life as well as individual, family, and community mental health and well-being. 

Student scholarship occurs not only in the classroom, but also through mentorship, research, and clinical practice. Students may participate in wide-ranging faculty research projects using diverse methodologies and dealing with issues such as clinical processes and intervention, LGBTQ+ families, grandfamilies, vulnerable families, global mental health, suicide, telemental health, trauma and resilience, participatory research, and policy.

MFT faculty employ theoretically rich research questions with rigorous analytic techniques, resulting in publications in top-tier academic journals and other academic sources, including Ageing and Society, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, Family Process, and Family Relations. 

HDFS faculty across the focus areas of Adult Development and Aging, Child and Adolescent Development, Family Science, and Marriage and Family Therapy often collaborate on research and service projects. Graduate students often participate in research projects and subsequent publications through collaborations with HDFS faculty and faculty in other departments, such as Psychology. 

More information about the Marriage and Family Therapy focus area can be found here.

The Family Therapy Center

Since 1979, therapists at the Family Therapy Center of Virginia Tech have provided low-cost, high-quality marriage and family therapy and mental health services to individuals, couples, and families in the New River Valley and surrounding areas.  The Family Therapy Center is the clinical and research training facility for doctoral students in Virginia Tech’s marriage and family therapy program.