Family therapy is an approach that acknowledges that when one family member is suffering, it impacts everybody. Everybody has a voice and family therapy helps members to use it to communicate to each other more effectively.
Family therapy may be shorter term or meet only as needed.
Family therapy is done with different members of the family unit. It might include everybody coming in to the therapy room together. Or family therapy may work mostly with the parents to support them understanding how to more effectively parent their unique teen.
No, in fact family therapy can be very meaningful as adult children and their parents find new ways to talk and be together.
Most teens work best in their ongoing individual therapy, and use family therapy when they need help communicating something to parents, or parents need help communicating something to their teen. At home, these conversations lead to shutting down or worse conflict. In the therapy office, you have someone to help you talk things out.
Because of my extensive work with adolescents, I often provide the family therapy while the teen is in individual or group therapy with a different therapist.
Families come in all shapes and sizes. I work with many special families who don't look like other families in their area, and I would want to understand how your family works.