Group and family therapy helps with eating disorders

Group therapy

Group therapy includes skill-teaching sessions that help people think about the connections between their feelings and actions. Group work also helps patients to practice new skills and behaviors and then report back about how they feel. Also, since a person with an eating disorder may feel a great deal of shame, when that person learns that she is not alone and that she can be in a relationship that is healthy, the shame lessens. In turn, there is less motivation for eating-disorder behaviors. Therapists note that eatingdisorder recovery is more well-rounded with some form of group support involved to help relearn how to deal in relationships.

Group therapy can take place in a residential setting, in outpatient centers, or as part of work with a private therapist. There are a variety of group approaches. Therapy groups may be focused on the eating disorders themselves, or on issues that may be distracting a person from a healthy recovery.

One advantage of this kind of therapy is that at least one professional therapist will manage the flow of the group. Support groups provide safe environments for exploring recovery issues. Support groups have the advantage of being inexpensive (often free), and a well-run group offers a healthy community. But to be both effective and safe they need to be professionally run and connected to a clinical treatment program as needed.

Twelve-step groups, based on the successful model of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which include organizations such as Eating Disorders Anonymous (EDA), Eating Addictions Anonymous (EAA), Overeaters Anonymous (OA), and others, can help in establishing abstinence from eating-disorder behaviors through sharing and support from others who have been there. Groups are free.

Family therapy

The American Psychiatric Association notes that one hard part of many treatment plans is managing relationships with family and friends. These persons may not understand why the eating disorder is present, which will likely make the one with the disorder feel misunderstood. Many treatment programs have included education and help for loved ones, but now the family is often involved in specialized psychotherapy as well, both to give them support and to help them be part of the overall treatment plan.

A 2007 University of Chicago Medical Center study found that of patients in treatment for bulimia, almost 40 percent of those with family involvement were able to avoid bingeing and purging after six months, while only 18 percent of those with individual supportive psychotherapy could stop bingeing and purging at that time.

One family-therapy approach that seems effective is the Maudsley method, which ensures that no one is blamed for the eating disorder. It seeks to develop common goals for parents and their sons and daughters.. Some methods focus on the causes of eating disorders; the Maudsley method does not. Instead, it simply sees anorexia as a serious illness that needs immediate attention, and increasingly is being used for other eating disorders.

The first phase of treatment helps the child to gain weight using a reward system managed by the parents. The second phase of treatment entails transferring control of eating back to the child. The child must demonstrate good weight gain to begin to assume responsibility for her own eating. The third phase begins when the child can maintain a weight of 95 percent of target weight without significant supervision from parents, and then can begin individual therapy to deal with underlying issues.

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