Severe anorexia nervosa among children and adolescents: Enhancing the feasibility and acceptability of Family Based Treatment (FBT)

1.1 Relevance for the call

Our mission in this project is to achieve knowledge that may improve treatment services of young people suffering from severe anorexia nervosa (AN) AN usually has its onset during adolescence and is one of the most severe mental illnesses. During the COVID pandemic there has been a double (13-16 years) and triple (6-12 years) raise in the number of admittances to child- and adolescent units in Norway (Surén et al., 2022).  Manualized family-based therapy (FBT) is the treatment of choice, yet consistent informal clinical experience has shown that the initiation of FBT may be complicated by parental stress, lack of knowledge about the nature of AN as well as a need of time to accommodate the expectation from FBT to take on a double role as both parents and co-therapists. The present study aims to develop more formal and systematic knowledge about how FBT is experienced from the perspectives of FBT-therapists and the relatives of patients with AN receiving FBT. The study adheres to the call through its focus on how research may improve specialist health care services for patients in the Region, and to the goal of conducting clinically relevant studies in cooperation between The University Hospital (UNN) and UiT- The Arctic university of Norway. Relevance to the call is also demonstrated through international cooperation (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center, Copenhagen University Hospital – Mental Health Services CPH, Copenhagen, Denmark).

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