ABSTRACT
The role of parents in enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E) for young individuals with an eating disorder is to create an optimal family environment for their child’s recovery. Subject to their child’s agreement, they may also be asked to take on a “helper” role, assisting in the implementation of some key treatment procedures (i.e., addressing regular eating, meals, dietary restraint, body image, events, and mood changes influencing eating). This “helper” role is different from the “controller” role required by other evidence-based treatments for adolescents with eating disorders—i.e., family-based treatment (FBT)—in which parents are required to control and supervise all their adolescent’s meals in the first phase of the treatment. This chapter describes the nature of parental involvement in the various phases of CBT-E, the major differences between FBT and CBT-E, and how parents should address the shift from an FBT to an individual treatment like CBT-E.
