The Genetic Game - Genogram

What Is a Genogram?

A genogram is a pictorial depiction of a family ancestry that exhibits comprehensive statistics on association amid solitary individuals. It is used in a diversity of departments, like medication, mental processes, communal work, genealogy, patrimonial analysis, and education. They accommodate an abundance of statistics on the pedigree constituted. They hold fundamental statistics established in the ancestry of families, such as the name, gender, date of birth, and death of each soul. Several genograms additionally incorporate data on disarray sustained in the ancestry, such as alcoholism, depression, diseases, alliances, and living situations. Genograms permit to swiftly recognize and acknowledge diverse specimens in the patient's ancestry chronicle that may have impacted the patient's present condition.

A genogram is a depiction of ancestry that comes living. Ancestries are the complex structure that interrelates with other clique and kindred groups, of which they are a fragment of, and they cannot be fully acknowledged without the extensive factors in which they reside. Genograms hold an abundance of statistics on the ancestries constituted because they authorize you to exemplify not only how members of an ancestry connect but also how they are an outcome of their time, by their conduct, relationship, and furthermore.

What Is It Used For And Do You Need This Diagram?

Family trees are only a trivial portrayal of collective parent and child connections. Although, there is composite interaction inside a lineage part, which can only be acknowledged through the utilization of a genogram. A genogram will not just exhibit you the names of individuals who are members of your family lineage, but how these individuals interconnect with each other and with additionals who are importantly tangled in their lives (clan, serf, instructors, educators, benefactors, grubstakes, live-in nurses). For example, a genogram will exemplify how your grandmother's arranged marriage was fixated before being born through associations and how your cousins ended up in another country in the early 1700s. Even if you desire to support your effort straightforwardly by counting only your instantaneous family, you can rapidly demonstrate in your genogram that your uncle Robert and his wife Sameera have two children, they sent their youngest child to boarding school, that Uncle Robert underwent depression, was an alcoholic abuser. A theoretician, while Aunt Sameera has not chastised her brother for many years, has blood cancer and has a history of dealing with anger issues.

A genogram is a multi-genesis diagram of an individual’s ancestry and communal tracery. Below are the benefits of using genogram.

• It permits users to prospect numerous association dynamics, analyze the advancing impact, and recognize courses.
• For medical executives, genograms can assist them with recognizing medical risk probabilities.
• Psychologists use the genogram to help independents and couples in treatment and advice.
• For medical executives, genograms can assist them with recognizing medical risk probabilities.

Symbols of Genogram

• In a genogram, a square denotes a male and a circle denotes a female.
• A horizontal line connecting the two shows a family.
• The sequence is from the oldest to the youngest for the children, placed below the family line, from left to right. These rules only make a way out for you, when the genogram becomes complex.

Rules of Making a Genogram

Making a genogram with the following directive will empower you to make any composite genogram.

• Rule 1

The first rule is every time placing the male parent at the left of the lineage and putting the female parent at the right of the family.

• Rule 2

The second rule is in sequence to circumvent obscurity; please assume a male-female relationship, instead of male-male or female-female relationship.

• Rule 3

The third rule is a spouse must always be closer to his/her first partner, then the second partner (if any), third partner, and so on.

• Rule 4

The last rule is always placing the eldest child at the left of his lineage; the youngest child is still at the right of his lineage.

How To Make a Genogram in EdrawMax?

Here is how you can draw a genogram using EdrawMax:

• Step 1 Identify the reason - why create a genogram?

The first rule is every time placing the male parent at the left of the lineage and putting the female parent at the right of the family.

• Step 2 Determine the number of generations to incorporate

You can go maximum up to three generations, generally. It would help if you decided how far you wish to go to elaborate on your family history.

• Step 3 Accumulate Statistics

From demographics to psychological, from health to habits, you need to search for all the information related to your family. You can interview or send a questionnaire to your family members. This will save time overall.

• Step 4 You can sign up on EdrawMax Online

Get started by signing up on Edraw. Login through Gmail or your social media accounts effortlessly.

• Step 5 Open the genogram maker

Click on new, and go to the pop-up menu, select the organizational chart and pick the blank square. Look at the left side of the screen and go to the search library. Click the family tree and select the genogram.

• Step 6 Draw the family members in each generation

Form the symbol library, make use of the relationship symbols. It represents the family and their relations. Take them to the canvas.

• Step 7 Depict the relationship type

Select emotional relationship symbols to show what kind of bond you share with a family member. You can also add love, harmony, stress, etc., emotions to the same.

• Step 8 Save, print, and export

You can add details and then save, print and export in almost any file types that you can imagine!

Genogram Examples

Key Takeaways

As rightly said by Micheal Crichton, “if you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree” , the genogram explains the importance of the same. Hence, it becomes necessary to know what is and how to make a genogram.