Living With Food: The Science Supporting Eating Disorder Treatment

By, Laura Collins and Dr. Mark Warren

There is a mistaken idea out there, mostly by those who have not yet trained in the approach, that the Maudsley approach says that one should not care about family systems, family dynamics, or be interested in how families communicate and talk to each other. In fact, these concerns are central characteristics of Maudsley as it takes into account that families will be in crisis, that communication around food issues will be challenging, and that an extraordinary amount of attention will need to be paid to how the family can work best together. Maudsley does say that parents do not cause eating disorders.  What Maudsley also says is that no one has demonstrated that knowing cause of an eating disorder helps to find cure, and that the first function of therapy is refeeding, not dynamic treatment of individual or family issues. When the adolescent is refed and able to move to normal adolescent issues, one can attend to other non-life threatening concerns. Many old ideas about eating disorders, their cause, and their treatment have to be completely discarded, this is true. Those ideas didn’t work well, and didn’t allow therapists to truly bring about change – because the underlying assumptions were flawed. However, the transformation for eating disorder therapists who suddenly do see their therapy skills working faster and more often and lastingly is extraordinary.

Maudsley allows therapists, patients, and their families to each use their best skills and assets. For both providers and families, if you are interested in learning more about Maudsley Family Based Therapy please check out:

http://www.eatingwithyouranorexic.com/

http://www.maudsleyparents.org/

http://www.feast-ed.org/

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

Contributions by Sarah Emerman