Lecture room: Árnagarður – 201. Click for a map.
Working institution
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Family team
Abstract
Anorexia Nervosa is a dangerous disease that greatly influences both the young person in the family, the siblings and the parents. For many patients it takes a long time and several treatment interventions to regain health. However, empirical evidence shows that there are efficient treatments available, and that one needs to adopt a family perspective to succeed in helping these adolescents.
In our outpatient unit in the Hospital of Vestfold (SiV) in Tønsberg, Norway, we have a longstanding tradition of providing a time-limited intensive day-care treatment that encompasses the whole family, and is grounded firmly in a family therapeutic tradition. The intervention consists of 4 weeks of daily work with parents and with the family. Both systemic/structural/externalizing thinking, local practices and frameworks for the treatment combine with knowledge of the nature and specific dynamics of eating disorders, to total up to be a useful intervention for many families.
In this workshop we will take a closer look at what function our intensive treatment has as part of out-patient, non-intensive therapy for AN, and in comparison with hospital admission/inpatient treatment.
Furthermore we will elaborate and discuss factors that are working ingredients in our model in helping the family overcome severe illness.
When and how is a period of intensive family therapy necessary to overcome viscious circles and to reduce the influence of the eating disorder on the family? We will present dilemmas and invite to a discussion of important features.