Welcome

This site is to inform professionals and families about Intensive Structural Therapy (IST), a powerful psychotherapy model that is extremely effective in dealing with eating disorders and in the treatment of troubled adolescents.

Context magazine cover

Whither family therapy:
the next 50 years

This article by Dr Charles Fishman was included in the 100th edition of Context magazine, published by The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK.
More about Whither Family Therapy: the next 50 years

About Intensive Structural Therapy

IST is a therapeutic model that works with the consumer, their family, and its larger social context. The therapist pinpoints where the system is stuck by identifying and transforming forces that are acting as a homeostatic maintainer.
More about Intensive Structural Therapy.

Eating Disorders

The IST model of eating disorders works with the sufferer and her family context, addressing destructive patterns such as conflict avoidance, enmeshment, over protectiveness and rigidity. Dr Charles Fishman’s book ‘Enduring Change in Eating Disorders’ provides treatment principles and is documented with up to 20 years of qualitative data.
More about treating eating disorders.

Family Therapy

Intensive Structural Family Therapy is capable of dealing with the role outside institutions and their representatives play in the life of the family. Dysfunctional families are encouraged to become more adaptable and flexible, and to create appropriate boundaries between generations.
More about family therapy.

Adolescent Therapy

IST works with young persons and their pivotal contexts: family, peers, school, and community. Structural family therapy techniques can be successfully applied to delinquency, violence, suicide, runaways and incest.
More about adolescent therapy.

Training & Consultation

Dr. Fishman has extensive experience in developing training programs, supervising clinicians and establishing new treatment services. He has conducted hundreds of workshops and presentations across the United States and abroad.
More about training & consultation.

Charles Fishman’s latest book

Enduring Change in Eating Disorders - cover

Enduring Change in Eating Disorders - Interventions with long-term results

This book presents the powerful and proven effective model of Intensive Structural Family Therapy and its application to the treatment of eating disorders.

More about Enduring Change in Eating Disorders >>

RSS NZ Eating Disorder Specialists weblog

  • Avoid Conflict Avoidance May 15, 2012
    Sitting in my office is a father of an adolescent girl who had severe anorexia. The anorexia had been compounded by the fact that the husband and wife were separated. The marriage fell apart when the husband announced that he had another woman and he was undecided where he wanted to go with his marriage. […]
  • The Problem with the Best Friend May 11, 2012
    Following from our previous blog, women using their best friends to vent their relationship problems to can be a form of conflict avoidance and can increase problems within the partnership. Women often tend to spend time with their girlfriends complaining about their partner. While this may let off steam and help the woman feel better […]
  • The Marshmallow Mother April 28, 2012
    Describing her self as a “marshmallow,’” Cindy, a mother with a chronic eating disorder came to me with the complaint that she had no control over her four children. The more difficult they became, the more her eating problems worsened. This can be a common problem where people, for fear of hurting others or of […]