Genogram & Ecomap

Before you start

Genogram & Ecomap is a marketplace tool. You need Plus and to adopt it from Marketplace → Genogram & Ecomap → Adopt.

It does not appear in the sidebar, and that is deliberate: a map is always about someone, and a sidebar entry would drop you into a list with nobody in context. You open it from the tool dock, which already knows who is in front of you:

• On your home screen — it asks who the map is about first.
• On a patient's page — the patient is already settled.
• From a session's tools panel — it opens that patient's map in a new tab, so you are not pulled out of the session.

Creating a map

Two questions, in this order.

1. Who it is about

2. Which instrument

Genogram for three or more generations of a family and the relationships between them. Ecomap for the patient at the centre and the systems around them.

A map is born named after the person it is about, and you can rename it whenever you like (up to 80 characters).

The board

Opening a map folds Alchely's sidebar away and the board takes the screen. The page does not scroll: you move around the board by dragging it.

• The rail on the left — what you can put on the board. Icons, with the name on hover.
• Zoom and framing — zoom in, zoom out, and fit the board, which reframes over everything on it.
• Undo and redo — for what you did yourself.
• The legend — drawn, not described: show it while you explain the notation to your patient, hide it when it is in the way.
• The saving state — Saving, Saved, or Not saved: still trying if the network drops. There is no save button.

A board holds up to 120 elements. At the ceiling the rail switches off with the reason: "The board is full. Remove something before adding more."

Drawing a genogram

The notation is McGoldrick, Gerson and Petry. That is not an academic detail: a genogram drawn with made-up symbols cannot be read by the next clinician.

People

From the rail you add male (square), female (circle), unknown (diamond) or pregnancy (triangle). In the element panel you mark deceased — the cross — and index patient — the double outline — and type the birth and death years.

Relationships

Always drawn the same way: select one element, then another, and the relationship bar appears with the three families the notation has.

A family the notation does not allow between those two elements is shown disabled with the reason, never hidden. The reasons you will meet most:

• "Children hang off the couple's line: select the couple, then the child." — that is what the notation requires, which is why a child does not hang off a lone person.
• "This parent has more than one partner. Select the couple's line, then the child." — with two unions, Alchely will not guess which one the child belongs to.
• "A couple joins two people." and "An emotional tie runs between two people."

Households

Select whoever lives together and enclose them from the rail: the outline is drawn around them, with its name. Up to 30 people per household. From a person's panel, Leave the household takes them out.

Drawing an ecomap

The notation is Hartman's. The board is born with the central circle already there: it is the household, and you place the people who make it up inside. Expand and contract grow the circle with the family inside it — and stop it before it swallows the systems.

Systems

Around it you place the systems, in eleven categories: extended family, work, school, friends, health, spirituality, leisure, community, social services, finances, and "other" for whatever fits none. Each carries its label, and its size is dragged: size is information here, not decoration.

Ties

A tie always runs between the centre and a system. Selecting both lets you choose two things at once:

They are independent: a tie can be strong and draining, or tenuous and sustaining.

The element panel

Select something on the board and the panel shows what that element takes: name and years for a person, a label for a system, who is at the centre, the type and years of a couple, a child's filiation, an emotional tie's type, or a household's name and who lives in it.

Every element also takes:

• Colour — board ink, indigo, teal, orange, blue, pink or amber. The palette is closed on purpose: these are the colours that read the same in light and dark themes and with colour-vision deficiency.
• Remove from the board — it takes whatever hung off it with it.

And you can pin notes to the board — up to 280 characters — which are not notation: they are signed by whoever wrote them, you or your patient. Every element also remembers who last touched it.

Years run from 1600 to 2200; names go up to 60 characters.

Letting your patient draw with you

Share mints a link for you to copy and send. Your patient opens it, types the name they want to appear under, and lands on the same board you are on.

• They hold exactly your tools. That is the point of the instrument: a genogram the patient can only watch being drawn is an interview, not a shared map.
• No account and nothing to install. A browser is enough.
• The link lasts three days and binds to whoever opens it first. It works for sending ahead of the session, and survives a dropped connection without locking them out.
• New link mints another; Revoke the link closes access at once. Your patient then sees: "Your therapist has closed access to this board."
• Along the top you see how many of you are in, and each element is marked according to whether the therapist or the patient placed it.

Sharing it into their portal

This is a different thing from the link, and worth not confusing. Share with the patient puts the map in their portal, read-only: they look as often as they like, from their own account, and cannot move anything. In their portal it sits under Genogram and ecomap, with the date you shared it.

Stop sharing withdraws it. And if one day you stop using the tool, a map you already shared stays in their portal: whether you pay a subscription is no reason for a family's genogram to vanish on them.

Filed images

Save an image files the board as it stands, alongside the map. It comes out at 2400 pixels on the long edge: three generations of names are readable on a printout and it stands up to zooming on screen.

• Each image downloads whenever you need it — for a report, or to take into supervision.
• And is deleted one at a time.
• Deleting the map deletes its images too. A genogram holds three generations of people who are not your patients and who never consented to anything.

Finding a map

From the dock, Open an existing one lists all your maps — patient, couple and open boards — with the element count and when each was last touched. You filter by instrument (genogram, ecomap or both), by patient and by a date range, and from the list you can open, rename and delete.

Rows marked Shared with the patient are the ones in a portal right now; rows marked Open board have no record behind them.

Troubleshooting