The fourth issue identified was a more varied time course in BN of
exposure to symptoms and opportunities for new behaviors to be tried. This
together with the often greater relational pressures requires a different therapeutic
stance in MFT-BN where the parents are not encouraged to take a
very active role in managing their child’s eating until the adolescent is more
able to regain control herself and the family can negotiate how best to provide
support. A key aim in MFT-BN is to help the adolescent become more
able to manage emotional difficulties as well as the behaviors associated with
dysregulated eating and to increase motivation to allow communication and
support from family members. Therefore the structure of MFT-BN has been
developed to provide enough regularity for the group to become and remain
cohesive, but with time between sessions to allow for the skills learned by
family members to be generalized.