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Resolving a disagreement in a clinical team: Overcoming conflicting views about the role of family therapy in an outpatient treatment programme for anorexia nervosa

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Abstract

In the Adolescent Psychiatry Department at the Institut Mutualiste Montsouris, Paris, as is also observed in the literature, the outcome for anorexic patients can sometimes be catastrophic, regardless of treatments proposed. This disturbing finding led us to reassess our therapeutic treatment strategies, in an effort to improve patient outcome. The multidimensional treatment program implemented in the Department includes parent counselling, but not the whole family in a family therapy procedure. It has been demonstrated better outcome for patients who underwent family therapy in comparison to patients who underwent individual therapy. This raised the question of whether family therapy could improve our outpatient programme. This paper describes here how a research programme was developed to resolve a disagreement in our clinical team as to whether family therapy should be added to the existing care programme. The paper describes the difficulties encountered by our team, and the experimental design chosen to resolve the debate. Data will not be set out here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Université Paris-Descartes, Faculté de Médecine, Site Institut Mutualiste Montsouris (IMM), 42 Boulevard Jourdan, 75014, Paris, France

    Nathalie Godart, F. Perdereau, Z. Rein, F. Curt, I. Kaganski, R. Lucet, M. Corcos & P. Jeammet

  2. Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Descartes, U 669 PSIGIAM, INSERM, Site Coch in Paris, France

    Nathalie Godart, F. Perdereau, Z. Rein, M. Corcos & P. Jeammet

  3. Department of Biostatistics, Hôpital Necker, Paris, France

    J. Fermanian

  4. FRCPC University of Ottawa, Canada

    M. Flament

Authors
  1. Nathalie Godart
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  2. F. Perdereau
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  3. Z. Rein
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  4. F. Curt
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  5. I. Kaganski
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  6. R. Lucet
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  7. M. Corcos
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  8. J. Fermanian
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  9. M. Flament
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  10. P. Jeammet
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Correspondence to Nathalie Godart.

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These authors contributed equally to the paper.

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Godart, N., Perdereau, F., Rein, Z. et al. Resolving a disagreement in a clinical team: Overcoming conflicting views about the role of family therapy in an outpatient treatment programme for anorexia nervosa. Eat Weight Disord 11, 185–194 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03327570

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