residential treatment

Strategizing for Change: Eating Disorders Association of Canada 2016 Conference

Andrea 8 Comments

Have I mentioned that I go to too many conferences? This week I attended the Eating Disorders Association of Canada (EDAC) conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. If you follow me on Twitter, this post might be a bit repetitive, as I seem to think that live-tweeting conferences is my single handed responsibility (that and convincing everyone and their dog to join Twitter). However, I wanted to take the opportunity to provide a bit more context around some of my Tweets and give my overall impressions about the conference and next steps that we might take to move from discussion to action around eating disorders in Canada.

Before getting into the conference, it is worth commenting on the pre-conference session hosted by the National Initiative for Eating Disorders (NIED). In case you don’t know, NIED is a not for profit group founded by Wendy Preskow and Lynne Koss and comprised of professionals … Continue reading →

Maintaining Change Following Intensive Eating Disorder Treatment

Gina 9 Comments

It is a relatively well known fact that eating disorders have a high relapse rate and many people, myself included, find themselves in multiple intensive – residential, inpatient, even partial hospitalization – treatments. One may ask if such intensive treatments really work or if long term intensive care is just a band-aid of sorts. I know I’ve had to ask myself, “why is this going to work this time when it hasn’t worked in the long run before.”

There is even debate in the field on whether residential treatment actually has evidence supporting its effectiveness (see Tetyana’s post here). I can speak from experience that the various intensive treatments I’ve personally done have saved my life and given me more perspective, skills training, and support than I could have had otherwise. However, despite having made significant changes, I’ve had more than my share of slips and relapses.

I … Continue reading →

Can Eating Disorders Be Contagious?

Tetyana 15 Comments

Treating a patient with an eating disorder can often feel like walking on eggshells; it is easy to say or do the wrong thing. I’ve covered this topic in my previous posts. In my first post, I wrote about negative attitudes that health care providers often have with regard to eating disorder patients and in my second post, I covered some ways in which caring clinicians that do work with ED patients may – usually inadvertently – negatively impact treatment, often by impairing the physician-patient/caregiver relationship.

But let’s forget about clinicians for a second, what if the treatment environment itself is damaging? Could treatment itself do more harm than good?

That’s the question that Walter Vandereycken explored in this commentary article. (This interesting paper was brought to my attention by a reader – you know who you are, so thanks!)

And just to be really clear Vandereycken doesn’t … Continue reading →

Should Insurance Companies Cover Residential Treatment for Eating Disorders?

Tetyana 48 Comments

Should insurance companies cover residential treatment for eating disorders?  The price tag is high, about $1,000/day on average, but evidence of treatment effectiveness  is astonishingly low. Practically nil, as I’ve recently discovered. Despite spending my free time punching away different keywords into the PubMed search bar, I came up with very little. And you know what I think? I think treatment centers should be embarrassed. And I think, wow, maybe insurance companies have a point? (A scary thought! I don’t actually think they do, though – but then, I just can’t wrap my head around for-profit healthcare, having lived all my life with socialized healthcare, and loving it.)

Carrie over at ED-Bites recently blogged about the fact that there a dearth of evidence-based treatment for eating disorders. It is a complicated issue, I know, but I do think that any organization or center that offers treatment (especially … Continue reading →