Couples seek family counselling

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Many couples seek help from the family counselling office

More and more couples are seeking out  family counselling  offices (familievernkontoret). In a single year, 27,000 new couples made contact.
‘Actually, many should have come for counselling years earlier. They often say that themselves,  ‘we should have done this before’ when they talk to us’, said the head of the family counselling office in Haugalandet, Kari Netland Simonsen, to NRK news.

 

Figures from Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentral byrå – SSB)  show that in 2015, family counselling offices received 27,000 new applications. Simonsen thinks it’s a good thing that more couples seek help from  family counselling  offices, but is concerned that people often contact the office for mediation and seek help when it’s really late.

Many come to late

‘I’m a little nervous that people think that the family counselling office is where to go when the relationship is over. The story about those who really come to the offices for help with ongoing relationships may not be so clear.

What’s dumb is that when you come very late, you are often locked in conflicts, or  patterns of behaviour you don’t get out of because they’ve been going on for many years’, Simonsen told NRK news channel.

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today