Saturday, October 13, 2007

See a video on Maudsley

Here at NBC Chicago. Try not to pay attention to the misleading title, and you will have to watch a short ad before the video loads, and of course there are the usual caveats at the end of the piece. But it seems like a good look at an ordinary family who are helping their daughter through family-based treatment Features Dan Le Grange. I think it's worth a watch.

5 comments:

Fiona Marcella said...

As you say a good look at an ordinary family making it work. All the best to them.

Fiona Marcella said...

Mind you (and you'll recognise this as just a personal gripe) I would like to ask Dr LeGrange what he does about sufferers who are unfortunate enough to have parents who lack the stamina to do it.

Harriet said...

Marcella,

I don't think it's that black and white--that families either have or don't have the "stamina" to "do" Maudsley. I think each family needs a different level of support, and that one of the ways families are let down is in not getting enough or the right kind of support.

Our family needed a lot of support. We got it from our wonderful pediatrician and from my d's therapist, whose role consisted mostly of supporting us, since my d was too malnourished to benefit from therapy early on. We got support from friends, who while they didn't really know what was going on at our house, organized meals for us and occasionally listened to me bawl.

Different families might need different things. I think that's one of the key roles of the Maudsley therapist, if you're lucky enough to be working with one.

I'm sorry your family didn't get what you needed. I suspect that with proper support most families could pull this off. I'm sure there would be families for whom this still didn't work--nothing is 100%--but before we decided that I wish we'd go down the road of offering families more help first.

Anonymous said...

Marcella,
I think that is the parents call in that situation. If FBT isn't for them they need to choose what to pursue instead. A difficult dilemma to be sure but it's a difficult disease. I understand that in your health system this degree of treatment choice isn't the norm though.
Jane

Fiona Marcella said...

Thanks for the understanding Jane - no indeed that degree of choice isn't the norm. Had we been united on this one my husband and I MIGHT have been able to get hospital/residential care for our daughter but it would have been a very hard fight, and as you know, we weren't united and I was persuaded to keep trying at home.

Just out of pure curiosity I wonder what happens in Sweden which has a far more socialised system of medicine than ours, if a family decide that they want to re-feed at home instead of sending their child to the Karolinska Institute - do they get told "on your own heads be it" and left without support, or does the state step in and try to force admission? Does anybody know.

Sorry Harriet - way away from the film which IS as you said, a very nice example of an ordinary family having slow, painful SUCCESS with the Maudsley Method and rescuing their daughter from the horrible illness.