Questions to Ask a Prospective Therapist

• What is your go-to treatment for working with a child or adolescent with anorexia?

  • If they do not identify or use FBT, ask them directly about it. Although FBT will not work for all anorexics, any informed mental health worker supporting someone with anorexia should know about FBT. Regardless of the therapy ultimately decided on, nutritional rehabilitation needs to begin ASAP.

• What is your first focus for a client with anorexia?

  • If there are serious medical and/or psychiatric issues like extremely low or high heart rate or serious suicidality, hospitalization most likely will be needed. Nutritional rehabilitation needs to be a main focus.

• How do you keep up with the current understanding of anorexia and its evidence based therapies?

• How do you help your clients get engaged in getting well?

• Who is in the room with you during sessions?

• How do you communicate and work with parents?

• Are there opportunities to communicate with parents privately?

• How do you help us and our child to work on goals outside the sessions?

• Do you work with psychiatrists who can prescribe medication if needed?

  • There are no medications specifically for anorexia.  There are medications for other mental illnesses that often co-occur with anorexia like depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and bipolar. However, often weight needs to be gained before the medicines work well.