Genogram also known as a family diagram, a genogram diagram is a well-established method of portraying or displaying an individual’s family history. Someone might argue that this is the same thing you can get with a family tree, so why go all the way to create a genogram diagram? The answer to this query is that a family tree only shows the list of family members for specific generations while a genogram diagram also reveals additional information i.e. medical history of each person, their cause of death, exact ages, their relationships with each other, their behavior towards one another and key personality traits.
Because of the additional information, a genogram diagram is used for medical and psychiatric evaluations. Physicians use this model to understand and monitor the individual’s medical condition, and physicians and psychiatrists use the model to understand the individual’s behavior and decision-making. There are many formats and designs of genogram diagrams on the internet and each format is used for a specific purpose. It is up to you, whether to craft a diagram yourself from scratch or use the pre-designed template layouts listed below by free downloading. All these templates are being crafted by experts and contain default information. You can simply follow the instructions and create your family genogram template like a professional.
Free Genogram Templates:
Things to do before creating the Genogram Diagram:
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Understand the Purpose:
Below, you can see a couple of different reasons for creating a genogram diagram. There can be any reason for someone to create a genogram diagram, so it’s better if you understand the purpose first. This will allow you to focus on the important factors while creating the diagram. Such as keeping a record of family history along with medical and genetic aspects. These purposes will help you to a better understanding of your family facets.
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Collect Related Information:
The next part of the process is to get all the required information about one’s family. Here you have to decide which generation you want to incorporate data in the genogram template. Then start gathering data from the relevant person and family members.
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Understand the Symbols:
Within a genogram diagram, lots of information is displayed and to keep things simple and easy to understand, various symbols are used. Each symbol represents a different family member and their relationship with each other. Such as the man is displayed in a square and the woman will be represented in a circle.
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Learn about relationship symbols:
Within a family, each member has different behavior and connection with the other. For instance, your mother is very calm and peaceful while your father has anger issues and he shouts even during normal arguments. However, your father has a great understanding and relationship with brother in law while your mother didn’t like her sister-in-law. These emotional attachments are described with specific symbols that you need to understand and learn before creating the genogram.
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Understand Family Relation Symbols:
Each person who is added to the genogram diagram has to have a relationship with other family members, and this relationship can be of any sort. For instance, your father and mother got married and now they are spouses. However, your maternal aunt is your father’s sister-in-law. Similarly, your father’s brother is your mother’s brother-in-law and your uncle.
Common Reasons for Creating a Genogram Diagram:
There are many advantages and benefits of using a genogram diagram, but two factors are more important. First of all, this diagram reveals all the history and details of an individual’s health and related issues. For instance, if a person has blood pressure or diabetes, meanwhile the condition is treated, the doctor might want to see a genogram diagram to understand if the condition is genetic and if it runs in the family. This way it’s easier to handle the condition and solve it on a long-term basis along with preventing it from transferring to the next generations with advanced techniques and medicines.
Secondly, this diagram unravels all the details of relationships and connections between family members with each other. This kind of evaluation and analysis is especially helpful for evaluating a mentally ill patient. Therapists and other professionals deal with difficult patients regularly and it’s often seen that introverted patients don’t want to reveal their family’s history and family members’ relationships with each other. By evaluating the genogram diagram, the therapist can see that his mother and father didn’t have a healthy marriage from the start and it damaged his childhood and made him grow into someone who doesn’t have any emotional attachment to others.
One of the common purposes of using a genogram diagram also includes the evaluation for insurance purposes. For instance, an individual wants to get an expensive life insurance policy. If he encounters sudden death, his family will get a huge amount of cash from the insurance company. In this scenario, the insurance company would want to make sure that there is no abnormal medical pattern in his family and that his ancestors, i.e. parents and grandparents lived a good amount of life. The Insurance company raises a red flag for those families whose grandparents died early before sixty. They show reluctance to provide them with policies as they think the person most likely dies before the age of sixty like their parents.