Family Based Treatment (FBT)

3 June

Family Based Treatment (FBT) is a community-based outpatient treatment model, often recommended for young people experiencing Anorexia Nervosa, Atypical Anorexia and sometimes Bulimia Nervosa. Carers are supported and empowered to help their young person eat normally again, regain all lost weight to return to their growth curve (and often beyond), reintegrate back into their lives in an age-appropriate and meaningful way, and also address any remaining challenges in the young person’s life.

Family Based Treatment has three separate phases:

Phase 1: Refeeding: the main focus in Phase 1 is helping your young person eat normally again, regularly and in amounts that allow them to gain weight each week until they return to their personal growth curve (and often beyond).
Phase 2: Transition: Phase 2 is all about transitioning the young person back to a level of independence with food and eating appropriate for their age/stage of development.
Phase 3: Establishing Identity: Phase 3 is about helping the young person to establish a healthy identity on the other side of the eating disorder, address any remaining life/mental health challenges, and engage in relapse prevention.

While FBT has a lot of clinical evidence for its effectiveness, we recognise that the experience can be extremely challenging and distressing for families to implement. Often, our young people don’t realise they are unwell, don’t want to recover, and definitely don’t want to participate in FBT! This response is common AND also doesn’t prevent FBT from being an effective treatment approach.

Rienecke, Renee D and Daniel Le Grange, ‘The Five Tenets of Family-Based Treatment for Adolescent Eating Disorders’ (2022) 10(1) Journal of eating disorders 60

Julia Quin

Family Based Treatment (FBT)

Family Based Treatment has three separate phases:

Phase 1: Refeeding: the main focus in Phase 1 is helping your young person eat normally again, regularly and in amounts that allow them to gain weight each week until they return to their personal growth curve (and often beyond).

Phase 2: Transition: Phase 2 is all about transitioning the young person back to a level of independence with food and eating appropriate for their age/stage of development.

Phase 3: Establishing Identity: Phase 3 is about helping the young person to establish a healthy identity on the other side of the eating disorder, address any remaining life/mental health challenges, and engage in relapse prevention.

The problem with Atypical Anorexia Nervosa