How We Developed FBT, and Why it Works

About this Webinar:
Abstract: In this conversation with parents, I will start with my own scientific journey that took me to the Maudsley Hospital in London, back in the 1980’s. Spending about five years in London helped me prepare some of the foundations for the development of Family- based Treatment (FBT) for young people with an eating disorder (ED). The 1980’s in London, and specifically at the Maudsley, saw the beginnings of a sea change in the treatment of young people with EDs. Whereas, up to this point in time, parents were largely excluded from this treatment process, in part because psychological theories and treatment models tended to view parents, at least in part, to blame for their child’s illness. The work at the Maudsley Hospital challenged these models in a very profound way. That is, by working with families, we demonstrated that there is no evidence to suggest that parents are to blame for their child’s illness. In fact, by including parents in their child’s treatment and leveraging their devotion to their child, parents are a potent resource, and their active role in treatment has brought about improved outcomes. As the family engages in FBT, coaching the parents to bring about weight recovery for the young person and providing their child with emotional support during this process, are paramount initial steps in this process. Here, I will elaborate on why FBT works, and what a ‘typical’ FBT journey(s) might look like. In particular, I will talk about how parental management of the adolescent’s nutritional intake may at times feel counterintuitive given that these disorders typically onset during adolescence, which is a time of budding independence for young people. I will conclude with some thoughts on how the parents are instrumental in returning their child to their appropriate adolescent developmental trajectory so that they may go on to become independent and healthy young adults.
Presenter Bios:
Daniel LeGrange, PhD, holds a Distinguished Professorship at the University of California, San Francisco, where he is a Benioff UCSF Professor in Children’s Health and Director of the Eating Disorders Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, as well as the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Le Grange also is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at The University of Chicago, and was a Berlin Institute of Health Stiftung Charité Visiting Professor at the Charité in Berlin for most of 2022-2023. Dr. Le Grange received his doctoral education at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital, the University of London, and completed postdoctoral work at the University of London and the Maudsley Hospital, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, California. Dr. Le Grange’s research interest focuses primarily on treatment development through randomized controlled trials for adolescents with eating disorders. He has authored or co-authored more than 670 manuscripts, books, book chapters, and abstracts, and presented his work at more than 200 national and international scientific meetings.