Parental Counseling for Parents of Eating Disorders Patients
Keywords:
parental counseling, family therapy, combined therapies, eating disordersAbstract
Adlerian Parental Counseling (CPA) is an hetero-centered treatment which aims to increase awareness of relational problems that may affect families with an eating disorder. The CPA is a brief intervention in which the counselor focuses on the problems pertaining the eating habits and relational attitudes of the affected family member. These are defined and clarified with the parents, while other issues not directly related to the focus are delegated to a psychotherapeutic treatment. In all mental disorders and in particular in eating disorders, therapeutic team must take in charge not only the individual patient, but the entire family, with a psychodynamic attitude and supportive purposes, being the family a fundamental core of the disorder. The liabilities should be recognized and defined, but the family members should not be blamed as the cause of the disorder, but conceived as a resource for the healing process. Especially in families with high maternal criticism and in adolescent or young adult patients, who go in search for the definition of an independent identity the CPA may be a cost-effective tool to take care of the family that must be used as a key ally in the healing process of the patient