Implementing Multi-Family Therapy Within a Community Eating Disorder Service for Children and Young People

Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions that commonly begin in adolescence. Multi-family therapy (MFT) is recommended for young people with anorexia, but to date the majority of research on the effectiveness of this intervention has been conducted in highly specialist eating disorder (ED) services. In England there is a national transformation program that aims to develop specialist community ED services for children and young people. The current study aimed to explore whether MFT can be effectively implemented in a newly developed community ED service in the Southwest of England. Following one pilot MFT group, focus groups were conducted with caregivers and MFT facilitators to qualitatively explore how they experienced MFT. Results showed that MFT is valued by both service users and clinicians in community ED settings, but there are challenges associated with providing MFT in this context. Guidance for meeting these challenges is provided.