Parents: choosing the most appropriate treatment for your loved one is one of the most important parenting decisions you will make. Although a diagnosis of anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorder may be frightening and intimidating at first, eating disorders are a treatable illness and professional treatment is essential. Not all treatment, however, is equally helpful nor is there one approach with all the answers. It is very important for parents to be armed with information, courage, and the knowledge that we are our child's best assets in the recovery process. Use the information below to help you ask good questions, learn what you need to know, and take action.

Making a Plan

• Diagnosis
• Clinical Guidelines
• How to find and evaluate treatment providers
• Parent reviews of treatment clinics and providers
• Evidence-based treatment approaches for the treatment of eating disorders, and additional options
• Types of professionals who treat eating disorders and abbreviations of credentials
• Levels of care: from outpatient to residential
• Family-based Treatment, or "The Maudsley Method" or "Maudsley Approach"
• List of Clinical Research Trials that are currently recruiting patients
• Guides to the treatment of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and eating disorders "not otherwise specified" (ED-NOS) 
• Defining recovery

Issues During Treatment

• Setting Target Weight 
• Re-feeding
• Pharmaceutical drugs in the treatment of eating disorders
• Birth Control Pills to restore periods
• Resistance to treatment 
• Insurance and money issues 

Family Life

• What Parents CAN Do
• How others can help
• Parenting during recovery
• Maudsley, or "Family-Based" therapy
• F.E.A.S.T. position statement on separation from family during hospitalization
• Resistance to treatment 
• Rights of caregivers 
• What about 'obesity?'  
• What is 'normal' eating?
• Activism
• Parent Support Groups
• Speaking to the media
• Internet safety and Evaluating Website Information about eating disorders
• Letters for parents and treatment team to adapt: Sample College Transition Contract   and Template for providing information to the clinicians of adult patients suffering from anosognosia and Letter to former clinicians with information on the Family-Based Maudsley approach