This latest book from Janet Treasure exemplifies practice-based collaborative research hand in hand with evidence-based practice in eating disorders. It bridges the dangerous gap between adolescent and adult services with an integration of the best understanding from both sides and draws on work from the addictions, psychoses, obsessive–compulsive disorder, genetics, cognitive psychology, and a range of psychotherapeutic models. The authors have also learnt from patients and carers. Both this book and its predecessor, Skills-Based Learning for Caring for a Loved One with an Eating Disorder, ^{Reference Treasure, Smith and Crane1} can be read by professionals as well as lay carers without feeling either patronised or mystified.

Parts 1 and 2 provide a scholarly but concise overview that should be read by everyone embarking on work with individuals with eating disorders. Readers should quickly observe that professional carers are as vulnerable as family to the destructive responses which eating disorders elicit to divide and rule the opposition. All psychiatrists – indeed all healthcare professionals – should read Emma Baldock's chapter on ethico-legal aspects of working with carers. It is a lucid discussion of respect for autonomy within an interpersonal setting.

Part 3, the ‘meat’ of the manual, is centred on developing a shared formulation of the individual's disorder. We understand how the genetically inherited anxiety and inflexibility that predispose to eating disorders will be shared by other family members, which may amplify and perpetuate the disorder. Therefore, it benefits all to learn to contain extreme emotions. This is illustrated with specific scripted vignettes.

A chapter on pregnancy and parenting includes a useful list of parenting strategies from mothers who have suffered from eating disorders themselves and another chapter emphasises fathers' contributions. Two excellent checklists are also included, which I shall use with all our families henceforth to highlight the particular traps that eating disorders set for us all.

A young doctor summarised in the BMJ her experience of anorexia in a single word, isolation. ^{Reference McKnight and Boughton2} Here, in 300 pages, is the wisdom of a clinical and research community urging us to collaborate in the task of bringing patients and families back into human society.