Family Based Therapy for Adolescents: A Special Form of Family Therapy with an Eating Disorder Focus Two-Day Advanced Workshop

About this event

Family Based Therapy (FBT) is an evidence-based eating disorder specific outpatient treatment first developed at the Maudsley Hospital in London in the 1980’s with further development in the USA (Stanford and Chicago) in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. FBT integrates concepts from a number of family therapy models in a developmentally sensitive framework and holds the basic premise that parents are the best resource to help their child recover from anorexia nervosa.

While simple to understand, the clinical practice of FBT can often be a challenge for clinicians who want to maintain fidelity and respond to the individual family and the clinical complexities.

This workshop is for mental health clinicians, experienced with FBT, who want to reflect on their practice and develop more advanced family therapy skills. In addition to the FBT principles the workshop will integrate systemic family therapy ideas to develop a strong focus on the therapy process, while also maintaining fidelity to the treatment structure and goals.

Workshop Content

• Over the two days we will focus on
• Establishing a secure base and relationship focus alongside the core principles.
• Working with common in session dynamics such as parental discord, misattuned interactions, strong emotions, and poor participation.
• Advanced interviewing skills that help parents and children to talk in session using questions, reflections and attuned responding.
• Clinical issues and processes in the later phases of treatment

Pre-requisites

 It is expected that clinicians attending will have:

• Experience implementing FBT
• Professional training and skills in child and adolescent mental health care