Maudsley Family-Based Treatment (FBT)
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FBT is the gold standard, evidence-based treatment for adolescents with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, OSFED, and UFED. In stage 1 of FBT, parents are empowered to temporarily take complete control over refeeding their child. Therapists take a warm but firm, active stance to treatment, acting as expert consultants to families on the topics of eating disorders and recovery. Parents are taught how to distinguish and separate their adolescent from their illness (their eating disorder) and are coached on ways to compassionately approach the task of refeeding their loved one without getting pulled into negotiations with their loved one’s eating disorder. While our therapists may be the experts on eating disorders, we acknowledge that all parents that we work with are the experts on their own children; they intuitively know how to love, support, and feed their children better than anyone else ever could, including our therapists. Families play an invaluable role in helping their child restore themselves to an appropriate weight and reengage in normal eating patterns.
Stage 2 of FBT begins once the adolescent has sufficiently progressed towards goals of restoring their weight and/or has shown that they are able to eat regularly without significant resistance or challenges. Gradually and carefully, adolescents are given back control over their eating, and ultimately earn back their independence in this domain.
In stage 3 of FBT, we briefly work with families on more normative challenges that adolescents face during this time in their lives and help them get back to just being a kid.
Outpatient FBT typically entails 15-20 sessions over the course of 6-9 months.
If families with adolescents diagnosed with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa are struggling to make progress in treatment in our Outpatient Eating Disorders Clinic, priority referrals are provided to our in-house Adolescent Eating DisordersIntensive Outpatient Program (IOP)/Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), or affiliated Inpatient Program.