Maudsley model family based treatment (FBT), also known as “the Maudsley approach,” was originally developed at the Maudsley Hospital in London for the treatment of adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN).  FBT aims to prevent hospitalization of adolescents struggling with AN, by empowering and incorporating parents into the refeeding process.  This treatment model bolsters parent’s efforts and success with helping their child recover from AN, and return to normal adolescent development. 

FBT can essentially be regarded as an intensive outpatient treatment, where family members play an active and positive role in combating their loved one’s eating disorder. FBT takes an agnostic view of eating disorders, meaning that clinicians do not analyze why the eating disorder developed and view the eating disorder as an external force that has taken over the individual. In FBT, parents and/or caregivers are viewed as the experts on their adolescent, and thus are an essential part of the solution, and members of the treatment team.