Family Support Helps Eating Disorder Treatment
A Study shows the affect of family support on treatment for anorexia:
“The eating disorder anorexia strikes adolescent girls in disproportionate numbers. But boys get it too, and it kills about 10 percent of those who have it. So it may be surprising that there have been few evaluations of effective treatment.
A new anorexia study from Stanford University and the University of Chicago compares two different behavioral therapies.
Adolescent-Focused Individual Therapy — or AFT — focuses on the patient’s self-image and relationship with food.
Family-Based Treatment — or FBT– encourages parents to be involved in weight gain and promotes family harmony.
In the study, 121 adolescent patients were given one or the other treatment for a period of 12 months. Full remission rates were equal for both groups.
But one year later, patients who had *family* based treatment were doing better than the individual-based group. Only 10 percent of FBT patients had relapsed compared to 40 percent of the AFT patients. ”
Eating Disorder Self Test. Take the EAT-26 self test to see if you might have eating disorder symptoms that might require professional evaluation. All answers are confidential.