Family Therapy for Eating Disorders

Earlier this week I spoke about various individual psychotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of eating disorders. Today, allow me to share some findings about family therapy and ED treatment...

Family therapy is an integral part of treatment for adolescent eating disorders. In fact, for adolescent anorexia patients, family therapy is considered standard. Family therapy has also been shown to be effective with adult ED patients as well.  Studies show that family therapy is more effective than individual psychotherapy for anorexia patients whose illness begins in adolescence and is not considered to be chronic. Both individual families and multi-family groups benefit from the approach to treatment.

There are several different types of family treatments in use for EDs:

1. Traditional family therapies: These therapies (such as Minuchin's Structural Family Therapy, for example) focus on roles, alliances, conflicts, or interaction patterns within the family that are related to the eating disorder. Problem solving and increasing family cohesion are frequent goals. Assessment of family relational patterns and communication are included in more traditional family approaches to treatment.

2. Family psycho-education: families and patients learn about the symptoms of EDs and gain a better understanding of what to expect during the course of treatment. Nutrition understanding is also shared didactically.

3. Separated family therapy (versus conjoint as in #1 above). The patient and the family are seen separately, however, interventions and support are offered to both patient and family alike.

3. Family-based behavioral treatments: Typically shorter than traditional family therapy (20 sessions) and instead of focusing on family dynamics, the initial focus is on putting parents temporarily in charge of helping to reduce control that the eating disorder has over their child's life. In addition, initial treatment focuses on weight restoration and reduction of eating disorders symptoms.  Once the eating disorder is under control, parents return control over eating back to their child and help him/her with normal developmental tasks.

The latter type of family therapy is based on recent trends and research findings which show that including the family in treatment for a patient's eating disorder is beneficial for recovery. This is in contrast to more traditional theories which may not have included the family in treatment...

...Perhaps you have heard of the term "Maudsley Therapy". Based on research conducted during the 1980's at a London hospital, the Maudsley approach to ED treatment is growing in popularity across the globe. Findings are indeed quite promising with treatment effectiveness having been demonstrated for both anorexia and bulimia. Studeis show that teens treated with a Maudsely approach recover faster and replase less often.

Every professional should be familiar with this new, advancing form of family treatment. Thus, I will include a more in-depth look at Maudsley Therapy in my next post.

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