Neuroscience of Adolescent Anorexia Nervosa: Implications for Family-Based Treatment (FBT).

Over the past 20 years significant progress has been made to elucidate some of the neurobiological underpinnings of the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa and their possible implications for treatment. There is increasing evidence supporting the notion that anorexia nervosa shares neurobehavioral patterns with anxiety disorders and involves reward processing aberrations and habit formation. There is consensus for the need of early intervention to ameliorate the effects of starvation on the adolescent brain and the effects of illness duration on neurodevelopment.

Rebooting "Failed" Family-Based Treatment.

Family-based treatment (FBT) has become well established as the first-line evidence-based treatment for adolescents with anorexia nervosa. However, fidelity to the FBT model can be poor, and treatment is often augmented or modified in various untested forms in the hope of increasing its effectiveness and acceptability. The New Zealand Eating Disorders Clinic, a private specialist outpatient clinic in New Zealand, has been seeing increasing numbers of families presenting for treatment reporting an experience of "failed FBT".