Treatment Of Anorexia

Treatments are decided due to;

• your age, overall health, and medical history
• extent of the symptoms
• your tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies
• expectations for the course of the condition
• your opinion or preference

Anorexia is usually treated with a combination of individual therapy, family therapy, behavior modification, and nutritional rehabilitation. Individual therapy usually includes both cognitive and behavioral techniques. Medication is usually administered if the individual is also suffering from another mental health condition such as depression.

Psychodynamic Treatment For Anorexia

Free Association

Free association is a technique developed by Freud and is used as a part of Psycoanalysis. The psychodynamic aproach states that mental illness is caused by conflict in the unconcious mind, with the aim of free association to resolve that conflict. The patient reveals these unconcious conflicts in the comfort and saftey of a therapy room while the therapist aims to uncover these conflicts and explain them to the patient so that they can resolve it. The patient is asked to talk freely about their childhood, thier earliest memories and the relationships that they have had/still have with others. If the patient stops talking they would ask them to reflect upon things they have said or things that they did not talk about. Freud gave his patients give words, such as Fear or love, and asked them to say whatever first came into their head. He believed that this would catch the patient off guard and would give a more honest answer.

This therapy is in depth and takes into account early experiences as well as current symptoms. It is also a unique method as it is needed to gain access to the unconcious mind and this allows subsequent interpretation by the therapist. However, this interpretation is subjective due to the fact that another therapist may come up with a different interpretation of the clients conflict.