The Family Health Tree: a form for identifying physical symptom patterns within the family.

The Family Health Tree is introduced as a form to simplify the identification of physical symptom patterns within the family. Four kinds of information related to family systems that are consolidated by this form are simultaneity of symptoms, similarity of symptoms across family members, any dominant physical symptom within the family, and degree of focus vs distribution of symptoms among family members. Use of this information for prediction, patient education, and preventive health care is discussed.