4. Question 3: What are the most effective treatments for patients with eating disorders? Finding an effective treatment for eating disorders can be challenging. However, the most successful treatments seem aimed at helping the patient realise how their self-perception impacts on the behavioral abuse of their body (Lock 2010). Such treatments are classed as psychotherapy. There are two types of psychotherapies discussed and evaluated below; namely, Family Based Therapy (FBT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This section will explore the relative virtues of each and the possibility of combining their strategies. 4.1 Family-based Therapy (FBT) The first treatment is Family Based Treatment (FBT). The basis of this approach is that families take the responsibility of supervising the food intake of adolescent children as the most appropriate people in the patient’s life do to this (Lock 2010). Research suggests that the advantages of FBT are unquestionable. A landmark study by The University of Central Missouri (2014) showed that 50% of patients who had undergone FBT made a full recovery after a long-term period. This compared favourably to those who received other types of ‘individual treatments’ when only 23% recovered (UCM 2014. A significant point which adds to an understanding of the reasons for success is that researchers discovered that children found it easier to control their unhealthy food-related behaviors with the existence strong family support and clinical checks (Doheny 2009). Furthermore, a study by Doherny (2009) conducted on 80 teenagers with an eating disorder included a divided sample – half of whom were treated with FBT and half of whom were treated with an individual therapy. The result showed that after 6 months, those who received FBT were twice as likely to recover than those with who underwent an individual treatment without family involvement (Doheny 2009). This is strong evidence to prove that FBT has been a most effective treatment for adolescents, (Cohen 2014) highlighting significant success and some major reasons for that success. 4.2 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) The second common treatment is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This treatment upholds the idea that a person’s thoughts and behaviors are interconnected and can thus be restructured to achieve healthier thoughts and behaviours (CED 2014). Present studies on CBT make several noteworthy contributions about its benefits but it appears difficult to compare its success to FBT. A first point to note is that developing thought patterns helps patients recovering from eating disorders but also prevents them from relapse (Cohen 2014). In comparison with nutritional counseling, which is often recommended for eating disorders, some studies are of the view that CBT is more effective (Robbins 2011; Wainwright 2012; Cohen 2014). These authors concur that patients who received nutritional counseling gained more weight while those who underwent CBT demonstrated improvements in their overall physiological and thought patterns, which was ultimately more effective in preventing a relapse (Robbins 2011; Wainwright 2012; Cohen 2014). Nevertheless, these authors put different percentages on the extent to which CBT was more successful than nutritional counselling. This ambiguity in the body of research makes it somewhat difficult to assess whether FBT or CBT is more successful as a treatment, especially when compared to nutritional counselling. At this stage, there has only been one major study done on patient recovery after FBT, which shows it is up to 17% more successful when compared to nutritional counseling (Lock 2014). It seems that there are still some aspects of research which remain uncovered. A further point to observe is that although CBT is found to be effective in treating any kind of eating disorders, most of the studies on CBT only focus on fully recovered adults who have suffered from bulimia (Cowden 2013). Thus it is still difficult to know just how effective CBT is in treating adolescents with eating disorders and how much more effective it is when compared to CBT. 4.3 Conclusion In conclusion, an exploration of CBT and FBT has highlighted that they both have clear benefits. However, the benefits apply to different contexts – age groups and eating disorder types – and these cannot always easily be compared with confidence. Furthermore, there is some variation in the findings about just how successful CBT is. While it is beyond question that it is more successful than nutritional counselling, attempts to put a percentage on its effectiveness have met with confusion. Looking to the future, even though both CBT and FBT are seen to be very useful, it is surprising to note that there is not much research on the benefits of combining FBT and CBT to treat eating disorders.