Family Treatment for Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa

Summary

This treatment development study seeks to investigate the most effective way to treat an adolescent's eating disorder and how best to involve the parents or caregivers in this process.

Typically, parents and their child are seen together in therapy. However, this can sometimes be difficult for both the parents and the adolescent. Both parents and adolescents have different concerns and are struggling with different aspects of the eating disorder. Therefore, the treatment in this study involves the parents in treatment, but the majority of therapy sessions are conducted with the parent(s) and adolescent separately.

Participants meet with a therapist for 20 sessions over the course of 24 weeks. For the first 16 weeks parents and the adolescent meet individually with the therapist. For the last 8 weeks families meet with the therapist every other week. These last four sessions are conjoint - that is, adolescents and parents will meet with the therapist together. This is to help parents and adolescents come together as a family to continue to aid the adolescent in the treatment of his/her eating disorder.

The investigators hypothesize that adolescents who receive this treatment will demonstrate improvement in eating disorder symptoms and body-mass index and that caregivers who participate will demonstrate decreased distress and caregiver burden. Furthermore, the investigators hypothesize that increases in psychological acceptance will be seen for both adolescents and caregivers post-treatment, and that treatment will be viewed as both credible and acceptable to both caregiver and adolescent.

Conditions

• Anorexia Nervosa
• Subthreshold Anorexia Nervosa
• Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Primarily Restriction

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Acceptance-based separated family treatment

Family treatment that combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the adolescent with Parent Skills Training for caregivers. The treatment package is designed to increase willingness to experience difficult thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in order to engage in effective behavior. To facilitate this, caregivers are provided with psychoeducation on eating disorders and skills in behavior management, self-regulation, and emotion regulation.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

  collaborator OTHER

• Duke University

  collaborator OTHER

• Towson University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alix Timko, PhD · Towson University/University of the Sciences

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2009-05-31

Primary Completion

2012-05-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations