Brief Therapy and Eating Disorders

Eating disorders, a prevalent health issue especially for women, have long been viewed by most clinicians as particularly challenging to treat and a syndrome that requires extensive long term therapy. However, given the advent of managed care and health care reform, clinicians are being pressured to become more efficient in their treatment of these clients.In Brief Therapy and Eating Disorders, Barbara McFarland offers practitioners the necessary tools to provide brief, clinically sound eating disorders treatment. Drawing from her own clinical experience as founder of the Eating Disorders Recovery Center, she demonstrates how solution focused brief therapy, as developed by Steve deShazer, is one of the more efficient approaches in treating eating disorders.Instead of focusing on client pathology and characterological deficits, this approach operates on the assumption that eating disorder clients have the necessary internal resources to create unique solutions to their problems. The author believes that clinicians must begin with the least intrusive treatment interventions and work diligently with clients to determine treatment goals that are salient to them.The author offers clinicians an opportunity to expand their vision not only in terms of their beliefs and attitudes about eating disorder clients but also in terms of their clinical focus. She describes practical, hands on strategies and interventions designed to guide therapists through each step of the treatment process. Not only does the author present a framework for conducting the first and second sessions, but she also details specific strategies and techniques for working with more clinically challenging cases. Throughout the book, actual case examples and transcripts of interviews are included to illustrate the process.The book concludes with a detailed description of the out patient group program at the Eating Disorders Recovery Center in Cincinnati, which includes a summary of the solution focu