Each year, the editor of Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, in consultation with the advisory council, selects an article to honor as the “Article of the Year.”
Article reviewers consider impact, originality, and quality of the scholarship in each manuscript.
2019 Award Winners
To view all 2019 JMFT Award Winners, click here!
JMFT’s 2019 “Article of the Year” goes to authors Karen Wampler, Adrian Blow, Lenore McWey, Richard Miller, and Richard Wampler (2019) for their article entitled: The Profession of Couple, Marital, and Family Therapy (CMFT): Defining Ourselves and Moving Forward. One of the committee members said the following about this article: “[This article] has everything you need when [thinking about] advancing our profession. What I enjoy most about [it] are the practical strategies for advancement, no fluff, just simple, straightforward solutions about meeting the challenges of our day.” Another committee member reported that this is “A solid, practical article from respected names in the field. It does a great job of providing a view from 10,000 feet while also providing actionable recommendations.” Finally another committee member remarked that Karen Wampler was “One of the perennial leaders in the field” and that this article “offers us a critical look at our field. Karen's reflections represent years of wisdom, commitment, and critical analyses. This is a must [read] for every CFT committed to advancing the field.” Dr. Karen Wampler passed away in 2019. She was a former Editor of JMFT, a Program Director at both the University of Georgia and Texas Tech University, and a mentor to so many systemic family therapy educators. We are pleased to honor her and her colleagues with this award.
Two other manuscripts were selected as honorable mentions in this year’s slate of articles. The committee members expressed appreciation for the level of scholarship and vision of these articles. They are presented here in no specific order: “Randomized Controlled Trial of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy Compared to Treatment as Usual for Depression: Outcomes and Mechanisms of Change” by Andrea Wittenborn, Ting Liu, Ty Ridenour, Megan Lachmar, Erica Mitchell and Ryan Seedall. One reviewer commented that this article is “an exemplar for the type of applied scholarship that needs to be widely disseminated in our field.” Another reviewer specifically noted the findings and suggested that “the strength of improvement with depressive symptoms AND relational improvement is VERY encouraging for our field as we advance our profession.”
The other article receiving an honorable mention was “Strengthening Clinical Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Challenges and Multilevel Solutions.” This article also comes from Michigan State University’s family therapy program and was written by Andrea Wittenborn, Adrian Blow, Kendal Holtrop, and Ruben Parra-Cardona (2019). One member of the JMFT Editorial Advisory Council said that this article is “an important and timely call to action. Research in the field has gotten away from a focus on clinical interventions. This kind of research is hard, but critically important for moving the field forward.” Another council member indicated that they liked “how this article is working to drive research innovation and use a systemic framework to ensure we are pushing relational research to advance the field.” JMFT continues to showcase some of the best relationally-oriented clinical intervention and process research available. It is my hope that JMFT continues to be a repository of this type of research and will continue to attract new authors who are committed to furthering our systemic understanding of relational processes and how to intervene in troublesome and dysfunctional patterns.
Eman Tadros, University of Akron,
Apprentice Reviewer of the Year
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Tom Su, Florida State University,
Apprentice Reviewer of the Year
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Qijong (Joanna)Wu, Florida State University,
Reviewer of the Year |
Spencer Bradshaw, Utah State University,
Reviewer of the Year
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