Eating Disorders - fieldi

4
A Family Systems
Perspective on Recovery
from an Eating Disorder
nancy thode
And out of the blue I understood that the family photograph held
the answer. That it was really a portrait of a kind of reckless
courage, a testament to the great loving carelessness of the heart of
every family’s life, even ours. That each child represented such risk,
such blind daring on its parents’ parts–such possibility for anguish
and pain–that each one’s existence was a kind of miracle.
—Family Pictures, Sue Miller
Mary Brown, fourteen years old, 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighing
95 pounds, was brought to the Wilkins Center by her mother, Jean.
Jean could not understand what had caused Mary’s recent refusal to
eat and her irritable behavior. According to Jean, Mary had always
been an “easy” child, had excelled at school, and had been cooperative
at home. Now she was not eating and was having mood swings
that upset everyone in the family.
Family therapists think about the development of an eating disorder
as a signal that the family is under stress. By stress we mean the