[2][3][4][5] Family-based treatment has been adapted for bulimia nervosa and showed promising results in a randomized controlled trial comparing it to supportive individual therapy.
[8] Daniel Le Grange, PhD and James Lock, MD, PhD describe the treatment as follows: "The Maudsley approach can mostly be construed as an intensive outpatient treatment where parents play an active and positive role in order to: Help restore their child’s weight to normal levels expected given their adolescent’s age and height; hand the control over eating back to the adolescent, and; encourage normal adolescent development through an in-depth discussion of these crucial developmental issues as they pertain to their child.
Strict adherents to the perspective of only individual treatment will insist that the participation of parents, whatever the format, is at best unnecessary, but worse still interference in the recovery process.
Parents are coached to adopt an attitude similar to that of an inpatient nursing team (sometimes termed "home hospital").
[citation needed] The patient's acceptance of parental demand for increased food intake, steady weight gain, as well as a change in the mood of the family (i.e., relief at having taken charge of the eating disorder), all signal the start of Phase II of treatment.
[citation needed] This phase of treatment focuses on encouraging the parents to help their child to take more control over eating once again.
[citation needed] Treatment focus starts to shift to the impact the eating disorder has had on the individual establishing a healthy adolescent identity.
Ninety percent of these patients achieved a normal weight or the return of menses at the end of treatment including at five year follow-up (Eisler, et al., 1997).
[citation needed] Two further randomised trials compared standard Maudsley treatment with a modified version where the patients and parents were seen separately (Le Grange et al.
[8] There is also evidence that a short (six months) and a long course (one year) of treatment results in a similar positive outcome (Lock et al., 2005).