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The purpose of this website is to offer parents and carers of people with eating disorders an insight into our work in carer skills interventions. The New Maudsley model is designed to equip carers with a skillset aimed at helping them deal with their stressful caring role. It focuses on communication, individual thinking styles and behaviour that may be accommodating and/or enabling the illness. It is intended to be used as an adjunct to treatment, as opposed to a treatment in its own right. Our skills training interventions are an ongoing process in the field of research and have involved carers, people with eating disorders and clinicians in all stages of the design and delivery.
The aim of the New Maudsley Model is to lower anxiety and distress in family members and to give carers communication tools, skills and techniques that help them engage their loved one to improve their self-esteem and develop the resilience to embark on change. Just as it paralyses sufferers, an eating disorder can paralyse carers and prevent them from effectively helping. The New Maudsley Model specifically focuses on carers’ understanding of the psycho-social and biological impact of the eating disorder and provides a skills-based programme to help ameliorate these behaviours.
The New Maudsley Method should not be directly compared with the Maudsley Family Therapy programme, also known as Family-Based Treatment (FBT) or the Maudsley Approach. The latter is a family therapy rooted approach for the treatment of anorexia nervosa and involves three stages of weight restoration, returning control of the eating back to the adolescent and establishing healthy adolescent identity. Professor Janet Treasure, one of the authors of the New Maudsley Approach, has been working at the Maudsley Hospital in eating disorders since 1981 and was involved when the first trial of FBT was in progress. Thus, the New Maudsley Method has evolved in order to adapt to the needs of adult patients as well. Its primary aim is to reduce stress and anxiety in carers and equip them with a similar skill set to that used by clinicians in an inpatient setting.
Clinicians and researchers may find the following set of scales used to measure eating disorder thoughts and behaviours useful. They can be found by clicking here.
The New Maudsley Approach is explained in detail in Janet Treasure’s skills training manual, Pam Macdonald’s handbook and Jenny Langley’s training manual, all of which are designed to offer carers skills and techniques to help them develop confidence and greater empowerment to support their loved one on the road to recovery. All books are available from www.amazon.co.uk.
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