Medical genograms are visual tools that map a family’s health history across generations, helping to identify inherited conditions and patterns. By using accurate medical genogram symbols, these diagrams go beyond family trees to reveal genetic, emotional, and psychological health links. Whether you’re building a health history genogram or exploring medical genogram examples, they’re essential for preventive care, genetic counseling, and understanding long-term health risks.
What Is a Medical Genogram?
A medical genogram is a visual tool used to map out a family’s medical history, revealing inherited health conditions and patterns across multiple generations. It’s commonly used in healthcare, counseling, and genetic research to support early diagnosis, personalized treatment, and preventive care strategies.
Unlike a basic family tree, a medical genogram includes detailed health data and emotional relationships, offering a more comprehensive look at a family’s physical and psychological wellness. This makes it especially valuable for professionals who need to understand the full context of a patient’s background.
How Is a Medical Genogram Different from a Family Tree?
A family tree shows ancestry and relationships, but a medical genogram adds layers of clinical and emotional detail. It incorporates medical genogram symbols to represent specific illnesses, like cancer, diabetes, or depression, enabling a clearer picture of genetic risk factors.
Also known as a health history genogram, this tool helps practitioners and families identify recurring health conditions and potential vulnerabilities. For example, reviewing medical genogram examples can reveal trends like generational heart disease or inherited mental health issues.
By interpreting these patterns visually, medical genograms allow individuals and professionals to take proactive steps, whether it’s pursuing genetic counseling, adopting lifestyle changes, or implementing early interventions.
How to Create a Medical Genogram
Creating a medical genogram is a practical way to visualize your family’s health history and identify patterns that may impact your future well-being. Whether you’re a healthcare professional, therapist, or simply interested in your genetic background, this step-by-step guide will help you build a comprehensive health history genogram.
Step 1: Collect Family Medical Data
Start by gathering detailed medical information from at least three generations of your family—this includes parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Focus on both physical and mental health conditions such as cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, and more. Don’t overlook emotional or psychological elements, which can also influence overall wellness.
Include:
- Diagnosed health conditions
- Age of onset
- Cause of death (if applicable)
- Emotional or behavioral patterns
The more complete your data, the more valuable your medical genogram will be.
Step 2: Understand Medical Genogram Symbols
To accurately document conditions, you’ll need to use standardized medical genogram symbols. These symbols represent various diseases, gender, emotional relationships, and other family dynamics in a clear, visual format. Using consistent medical genogram symbols ensures that your diagram is both informative and easy to interpret by others, especially professionals in healthcare or therapy.
Tip: Read Genogram Symbols: 70+ Basic, Medical and Genogram Relationship Symbols to get familiar with the correct notation.
Step 3: Use a Medical Genogram Template
Rather than starting from scratch, choose a ready-made medical genogram template. Creately offers customizable, editable genogram templates that allow you to simply drag and drop family members, conditions, and symbols. Templates save time and help maintain proper formatting, especially when documenting complex family histories.
Step 4: Plot Generations and Conditions
Now, begin building your genogram. Arrange individuals by generation—grandparents at the top, followed by parents, then children. Use lines to show relationships, and apply the correct medical genogram symbols to represent health conditions for each person.
Make sure to:
- Indicate marriages, divorces, and partnerships
- Add relevant emotional bonds if they relate to health outcomes
- Use consistent labeling for clarity
This step transforms raw data into a visual genogram for health history that’s easy to analyze and share.
Step 5: Analyze Health Patterns Across the Family
Once your medical genogram is complete, review it for trends. Are certain diseases appearing repeatedly in the same branch of the family? Do mental health conditions correlate with specific emotional relationships? These insights can be crucial in forming preventive care plans and personalized health strategies. Looking at several medical genogram examples can also help you interpret your own diagram more effectively and compare similar patterns.
By following these steps, you can create a detailed health history genogram that not only illustrates genetic risks but also enhances conversations with healthcare providers, counselors, or family members.
10 Medical Genogram Examples for Various Conditions
Here are 10 medical genogram examples based on specific conditions commonly tracked in a health history genogram. Each template offers insight into how particular illnesses manifest across generations and helps visualize inherited health risks.
1. Genetic Disorders Medical Genogram Template
This genogram template is designed to visually represent the inheritance patterns of genetic disorders across multiple generations. It focuses on identifying affected individuals, carriers, and non-carriers of specific genetic conditions—such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, or Tay-Sachs disease. The template uses standardized medical genogram symbols to map out autosomal recessive, autosomal dominant, or X-linked inheritance, making it easy to spot familial trends and at-risk individuals.
Ideal for use in genetic counseling, medical education, and family history assessments, this template supports early detection, testing decisions, and family planning by clearly outlining how a genetic disorder is passed down in a family.
2. Cancer Medical Genogram Template
This medical genogram template maps the occurrence of cancer diagnoses across three generations, helping visualize hereditary patterns and identify familial cancer clusters. It highlights individuals diagnosed with specific cancers—such as breast, ovarian, prostate, or colorectal cancer—along with age of onset, type of cancer, and genetic testing status where applicable.
This template can display BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers, early-onset cases, and family members who have undergone preventive screenings or genetic counseling.
Perfect for use in oncology, genetic risk assessment, and hereditary cancer syndromes, this genogram supports early detection strategies and informed clinical decision-making based on family history.
3. Mental Health History Genogram Template
This genogram template is designed to track and visualize mental health conditions across multiple generations, highlighting patterns of hereditary mental illnesses, emotional relationships, and behavioral trends. It maps diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, and substance use disorders, along with relevant life events like suicide, hospitalization, or therapy history.
This medical template uses notations to indicate diagnoses, suspected conditions, emotional connections, and conflict dynamics, making it a powerful tool for therapists, counselors, psychologists, and social workers. By identifying recurring issues and family dynamics, it helps support clinical assessments, treatment planning, and intergenerational understanding.
Ideal for use in family therapy, psychiatric evaluations, and mental health case management, this genogram fosters a deeper understanding of how genetics, trauma, and environment contribute to emotional well-being.
4. Cardiovascular Diseases Medical Genogram Template
This medical genogram template is built to map the family history of cardiovascular diseases across multiple generations. It highlights individuals diagnosed with conditions such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart attacks, strokes, arrhythmias, and congenital heart defects.
This template uses notations to indicate age of onset, severity, lifestyle factors (e.g., smoking, obesity), and early deaths from cardiac events. It also allows the inclusion of diagnostic milestones like angiograms, bypass surgeries, or pacemaker implants.
Ideal for use in preventive cardiology, genetic risk assessment, and patient education, this genogram helps healthcare professionals identify hereditary patterns and risk factors, enabling early intervention and personalized care strategies.
5. Respiratory Disorders Medical Genogram Template
This medical genogram template is designed to visualize the family history of respiratory disorders across generations. It highlights individuals affected by conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, emphysema, and sleep apnea. The template also allows annotation of onset age, severity, environmental triggers (e.g., smoking, allergens), and hospitalization history.
Using standardized genogram symbols, it helps track genetic predispositions, environmental influences, and patterns of recurrence—providing valuable insight for clinicians in pulmonology, primary care, and genetic counseling.
Ideal for use in assessing hereditary risk, treatment response, and family-based prevention strategies, this template supports proactive respiratory health management and early diagnosis.
6. Neurological Disorders Medical Genogram Template
This medical genogram template maps the occurrence and inheritance patterns of neurological disorders across multiple generations. It captures diagnoses such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis (MS), Huntington’s disease, and migraines with aura, along with relevant details like age of onset, progression, and genetic testing results.
This medical template helps identify hereditary trends, early-onset cases, and at-risk individuals, making it especially useful in neurology, geriatric care, and genetic counseling. You can also note cognitive decline, memory loss, motor impairments, and any history of neurological evaluation or caregiving burden.
Ideal for clinicians, researchers, and counselors, this genogram supports early detection, family education, and informed medical planning for families affected by neurological conditions.
7. Rare Diseases Medical Genogram Template
This specialized medical genogram template is designed to track and visualize the inheritance and occurrence of rare diseases across family generations. It maps conditions such as muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, Gaucher disease, Marfan syndrome, and other rare genetic or metabolic disorders. The template highlights individuals who are diagnosed, carriers, or under evaluation, along with details like age of onset, clinical symptoms, and genetic testing status.
It helps healthcare providers and genetic counselors identify hereditary risk patterns, support early diagnosis, and guide family-based genetic screening. It can also incorporate carrier status, consanguinity, and rare inheritance patterns such as X-linked or mitochondrial transmission.
Ideal for use in clinical genetics, research, rare disease registries, and family counseling, this genogram facilitates a better understanding of complex inheritance and supports personalized care planning for affected families.
8. Autoimmune Diseases Medical Genogram Template
This genogram template is built to track and illustrate the family history of autoimmune diseases across multiple generations. It maps diagnoses such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), multiple sclerosis (MS), type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and celiac disease, highlighting affected individuals, onset age, symptom severity, and treatment adherence.
This template helps visualize hereditary patterns, co-occurring autoimmune conditions, and the prevalence of autoimmune clusters within families. It can also include suspected but undiagnosed cases, environmental triggers, and lifestyle factors that influence disease expression.
Ideal for use in clinical immunology, rheumatology, endocrinology, and genetic counseling, this genogram supports early risk identification, enhances patient education, and promotes family-based care planning for autoimmune conditions.
9. Metabolic Disorders Medical Genogram Template
This genogram template is designed to map the family history of metabolic disorders across multiple generations, providing insight into hereditary risk factors and genetic patterns. It includes conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, metabolic syndrome, phenylketonuria (PKU), hemochromatosis, and glycogen storage diseases.
This medical template shows diagnosed individuals, carriers, age of onset, lifestyle-related risk factors, and clinical interventions (e.g., insulin therapy, dietary management). It also allows annotation of obesity, sedentary habits, and other contributing environmental factors that can influence disease development.
Ideal for use in endocrinology, family medicine, and genetic counseling, this template supports early detection, preventive screening, and personalized treatment planning, helping healthcare professionals make informed decisions for individuals and families with a history of metabolic conditions.
10. Infectious Diseases Medical Genogram Template
This medical genogram template is designed to map the transmission and impact of infectious diseases within families across generations. It highlights conditions such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis, COVID-19, and hereditary infections passed from parent to child (e.g., congenital syphilis, cytomegalovirus).
It captures key details like mode of transmission (vertical, sexual, environmental), treatment adherence, disclosure status, and chronic or latent infection states. The template also allows for annotations of vaccine history, exposure risks, and co-infections.
Ideal for use in infectious disease management, epidemiology, family medicine, and public health counseling, this genogram helps identify patterns of infection, at-risk individuals, and potential barriers to care or prevention.
In essence, Medical Genograms represent a confluence of genetic, medical, and psychosocial histories. Their value in providing a comprehensive understanding of an individual’s health risks and influences cannot be understated. As preventive health strategies gain momentum, the utility of Medical Genograms is set to rise, making them an indispensable tool in the healthcare toolkit.
Helpful Resources
Discover everything you need to know about genograms, from what they are, how to create a genogram, to how to understand what they mean.
Explore our collection of genogram templates.
Learn how different types of genograms can help visualize important aspects of life.
Explore the essential symbols used in genograms to represent everything from basic family structures to complex emotional and medical relationships.
Ready to Get Started: Map Your Family’s Health with a Medical Genogram
Creating a medical genogram is one of the most effective ways to visualize your family’s health history and identify potential genetic risks. Whether you’re a healthcare professional, therapist, or an individual taking charge of your well-being, medical genograms offer deep insight into both physical and psychological health patterns.
From tracking inherited conditions to supporting preventive care, the value of a health history genogram is undeniable. And with medical genogram examples and templates tailored to specific conditions, you can begin building your own personalized diagram with confidence.
Use Creately to create accurate, editable genograms in minutes. Choose from a range of professional medical genogram templates, customize them with correct medical genogram symbols, and bring clarity to your family’s health story.
FAQ About Medical Genograms
What is the main purpose of a medical genogram?
Who can benefit from using medical genograms?
How is a medical genogram different from a regular family tree?
Can I use medical genograms to track vaccine-preventable diseases?
How do I show asymptomatic carriers or latent infections on the genogram?
Resources:
Mendenhall, T.J. and Trudeau‐Hern, S. (2014). Using Medical Genograms in Clinical Supervision. Clinical Supervision Activities for Increasing Competence and Self‐Awareness, pp.141–147. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/9781394259335.ch22.
Schilson, E., Braun, K. and Hudson, A. (1993). Use of genograms in family medicine: A family physician/family therapist collaboration. Family Systems Medicine, 11(2), pp.201–208. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/h0089389.
