Anorexia nervosa: treatment satisfaction

Patient satisfaction plays a central role in treatment alliance and outcome. Investigating patient expectations and experiences of treatment sheds light on its importance. This study examines adolescent anorexia nervosa patients and their parents' satisfaction with family‐based treatment. Patients and parents answered a questionnaire at the eighteen‐month follow‐up focusing on expectations and experiences of treatment, therapists, aims of treatment and accomplishment. The results show that 73 per cent of the patients and 83 per cent of the parents felt that their pre‐treatment expectations had been fulfilled. The majority agreed that individual patient sessions and parental sessions were of great help, while the patients valued family therapy sessions as being less helpful than did parents. In overall terms, parents were more pleased with the therapists than were the patients. These data suggest that family‐based treatment with individual sessions for patients, in parallel with parental sessions combined with family sessions, corresponds well to patients' and parents' treatment expectations.