15 year old girl with anorexia, her mother was anorectic too

I know this 15 year old girl with anorexia nervosa and she is undergoing psychiatric treatment with no success (keeps losing weight and her behavior didn't change in a positive way).

I think the mother's behavior plays a very important part in this girl's illness so I will try to describe the mother:

The mother who happens to be a medical doctor (the irony) suffered from anorexia nervosa in her late teenage years and she told me she had to undergo intensive treatment (stay in the hospital with a very strict regime). The mother is in her mid 40s now and I notice she still does not have a healthy relationship with food.

She is very afraid of getting overweight (she was overweight in her teenage years) and eats very little. She also hates cooking in a way that I have never seen before and is unable to make a decent meal for her daughters (the girl with anorexia has an 18 year old sister who is a bit overweight, mother says she may be bulimic). How can a person with these attitude towards eating and food in general help her daughter?

Is there a chance the mother did not completely overcome her anorexia nervosa and her attitude towards food now is a reflex of the disease she suffered?

Thanks.

Hey there,

There's a pretty good chance that the girl's treatment team has already picked up on the mother's problem. There's a program in the UK called the Maudsley Method that treats the entire family instead of just the person with the eating disorder. It's usually a family disease because of all the things that cause it. Restricting or binging & purging are only symptoms of something much larger.

From what you've described I don't think the mother ever overcame her anorexia. She's still projecting her problems onto food.