
The connector lines and shapes can also tell who is living and who has passed away, if people are married or simply living together and more. To start the Genogram you will have to meet with members of the family first. Therefore, a genogram uses symbols and different colors to aid users in visualizing different family relationships, social relationships, emotional relationships, and the hereditary patterns within a given family (Santrock, 2010, p. This is done by specific symbols and connectors, telling the viewer if a child was miscarried, if there was an abortion, if there are twins, if someone is adopted, etc. Psychological medical and health experts frequently use Genograms to spot shapes of physical and mental ailments like depressive disorders, the disease condition, melanoma as well as other anatomical disorders. A genogram is a representation of different relationships and medical conditions within a particular family. Unlike family trees, however, genograms contain additional information including the way people are related. A family genogram example details the medical history of a family in order to assess a family member’s risk of developing a disease. The most basic layer of the genogram contains the family members and the way each person is related to the rest. While in some genograms all layers co-exist, sometimes diagrams are drawn separately for each of the above-mentioned purposes. The third layer adds additional clarity of the emotional bonds and relationships, including who was in love with whom, who is obsessed by someone else, who is abusive mentally and/or physically, etc. The second layer usually contains information on diseases such as heart condition, diabetes, etc.

The first layer describes the basic information related to the people in the family - marriage, divorce, children, etc. The main task of genograms is to visualize the relationships between the members within a family on a very deep level, as well as the genetic diseases which may be transferred from/to a family member.ĭespite that genograms are not strictly categorized on different types, most of them contain three layers.

Although they are used to describe families and blood relatives connections, genograms greatly differ in look and purpose from the family tree diagrams. Genograms are amongst the youngest members of the diagramming family, with a starting use in 1985.
