Sensible psychological techniques can help family members manage the problems and challenges of family life.

The Director of the UTS Health Psychology Unit, Dr Antony Kidman, believes that family stress is often greatest at transition points, when there is a break in the unfolding family life cycle.

Dr Kidman, who recently conducted a seminar on "Family Life: Managing Stress and Adapting to Change", asserts that one part of the family cannot be understood in isolation and that family functioning is more than the sum of the parts.

Dr Kidman encourages family members to learn a variety of cognitive, emotive and behavioural techniques that can be applied to combat their irrational tendencies and to encourage them to think, feel and behave more appropriately.

"The concept of family life as a journey through the stages of the life cycles is an appealing one," he said. "We are born into one family and most of us marry and become part of another family.

"The joys and sorrows as we pass through the various stages such as childhood and adolescence have a profound effect on our personality and the way we cope both as younger and as older adults.

"Cognitive behaviour therapy and rational emotive behaviour therapy together with the family systems approach have made a valuable contribution to understanding family dynamics and in helping people to resolve difficulties in family life.

"Family members interact intensively with one another, children affect their parents emotionally and parents do the same thing to their children. We largely disturb ourselves by taking the actions of other family members too seriously. We invariably have the choice, no matter how others behave, of not seriously upsetting ourselves about their behaviour.

"We are all prone to irrationality and self-disturbance and only through persistent effort and a willingness to learn new attitudes and techniques can one achieve and maintain emotional health."

The seminar, which was held at the Royal North Shore Hospital, focused on topics such as understanding the family, childhood and children, adolescence and teenagers, adulthood and growing old.

According to Dr Kidman, the vast majority of adults over 65 do not live alone but with other family members and more than 80 per cent live within an hour's distance of at least one child.

"Approximately two thirds perceive their health as either good, very good or excellent and less than five per cent live in institutions," he said.

"Families in later life are faced with adjustments to retirement that may strain a marriage that until then has been balanced in different spheres."

"Evidence suggests that men and women respond very differently to the ageing roles. Even when members of the older generation are debilitated, there is not really a reversal of roles between one generation and the next because parents always have a great many years of extra experience and remain models to the next generation for the stages of life ahead."