Eating Disorder Treatment Options

Diagnosis

If your healthcare provider suspects an eating disorder, he or she might perform additional tests to accurately diagnose the disorder (or lack thereof), but most often a family doctor will refer the patient to an eating disorder treatment center for a diagnosis.

Additional tests and assessments may include the following.

Physical Examination

This will help the medical professional accurately assess the situation and exclude any other medical causes that may be contributing to your disorder. Eating disorders can cause damage to vital organs, so doctors may do further physical testing such as blood tests and EKGs.

Psychological Evaluation

A psychological self-assessment may be included as well as questions from your mental health professional about your emotions and eating habits to get a better idea of the relationship you have with food.

Treatment

There are several levels of care within eating disorder treatment and recovery. Sometimes a patient might move from one level to another. Where treatment begins depends upon the history and severity of the eating disorder, and what treatments have already been tried, if any. Thus, a thorough evaluation is an important piece of the recovery process.

Very generally, eating disorder treatment can include individual and group therapy, family therapy, nutrition and exercise education, and monitoring physical health as they are a key to recovery.

Levels of Care

Outpatient

This level of care involves the patients taking part in one to three hours of treatment programming weekly by a few providers weekly (such as therapists, doctors, dietitians.)

IOP

IOPs include 7 to 15 hours of programming per week, including group, family, and individual therapy, nutrition education, recreational therapies, movement education and some meals.

PHP

PHP care is similar to IOP treatment, but the patient attends for longer periods of time each day (between 4 to 8 hours daily). Like all previous levels of care, the patient lives independently.

Residential

With this level of care, the patient lives at the facility where he or she is receiving eating disorder treatment.

Inpatient (hospitalization)

Most acute level of care and is reserved for patients facing life-threatening medical complications caused by low body weight and malnutrition. At this level, the primary focus is regaining physical health.

Mental Health & Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy usually involves talking to a trained mental health expert in order to help improve life and recover from disorders, addictions, anxiety and depression. Different types of psychotherapy include:

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy in which the therapist and client work with acceptance and change-oriented strategies, and ultimately balance and synthesize them, in a manner comparable to the philosophical dialectical process of hypothesis and antithesis, followed by synthesis.

DBT began with efforts to treat borderline personality disorder, but evidence shows DBT can be useful in treating eating disorders, mood disorders, suicidal ideation, and for change in behavioral patterns such as self-harm, and substance abuse.

Somatic Experiencing (SE)

Somatic experiencing (SE) is a short-term naturalistic approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine.

Somatic Experiencing promotes awareness and release of nervous system arousal and physical tension that remains in the body in the aftermath of trauma. This arousal and tension in the body occurs because the survival responses (fight, flight or freeze) of the autonomic nervous system are aroused but are not fully discharged after the traumatic situation has passed.

This can have a profound effect on the trauma survivor’s emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. Nervous system arousal symptoms may include anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, chronic pain and more. Somatic Experiencing interventions allow a trauma survivor to track his or her “felt sense,” using the body to restore the nervous system’s inherent capacity to self-regulate and return to a state of relaxed alertness, promoting a holistic sense of well-being.

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a brief, attachment-focused psychotherapy that centers on resolving interpersonal problems and symptomatic recovery.

It is an empirically supported treatment that follows a highly structured and time-limited approach and is intended to be completed within 12–16 weeks.

IPT is based on the principle that relationships and life events impact mood and that the reverse is also true.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a form of counseling and a branch of clinical behavior analysis.

It is an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies mixed in different ways with commitment and behavior-change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro in the 1990s in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the patient in one type of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping.

The goal of the back-and-forth stimuli is to facilitate the accessing and processing of traumatic memories and other adverse life experience to bring these to an adaptive resolution.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy in which the therapist works with the patient to identify cognitive distortions and how they might relate to emotional dysregulation and mal-adaptive behaviors.

The goal is to develop coping strategies with the therapist to help reduce or mitigate those thoughts and behaviors, and to improve the quality of life.

Preparing for Your Assesment

The intake process varies by level of care being sought, and by specific clinic or hospital. In general, an intake process will include a comprehensive mental and physical health assessment. This assessment likely will ask about:

Your physical symptoms all your symptoms including ones that you may think are unrelated, what medications, vitamins, or supplements you may currently be taking, your medical history, and personal information about recent events in your life.

Getting Started & What to Expect

If you choose Healthy Futures as your recovery team, we try to make the intake process as convenient as possible. To assist you, we have three main people you may be talking to in the process. You first will talk with one of our Intake Specialists, who will answer your questions about our programs. She also will help answer any questions about fees and insurance coverage and the how-tos of this process.

The next step is an assessment. This can be done virtually, or in person, depending on your comfort level. Currently we do have some requirements in place to help guard the health of everyone.

The purpose of the assessment is to gauge which level of care you need, and to develop an initial treatment plan. To do that we ask that you fill out comprehensive paperwork and come to an assessment. We will e-mail you the paperwork ahead of time to save time the day of your assessment. If you are a minor, your parent or guardian also will be required to complete some paperwork.

If our IOP is not the best level of care for you, we will offer you referrals to outpatient therapy with us or with another provider. You also may be recommended for inpatient care; again, referrals will be given to you at this time.

If Healthy Futures is not going to be your first step, we will do everything we can to make the next step easy for you, including sending our written assessment to your referred treatment provider. We want you to have the best care for your specific situation at the right time; sometimes that’s with us and sometimes that is by starting somewhere else. We hope that once our level of care is appropriate for you (outpatient and intensive outpatient) we will see you again!

Once the assessment is completed, the next step is admission. If entering our IOP, your insurance will be called to give clinical information to get authorization for our services. We will work to get detailed information to you on your financial responsibility and payment arrangements will be made at this time. Also, you will need to secure medical clearance from your physician if you have not already done so. Here’s a link to download a printable copy of the medical clearance form.

Once we have authorization from your payment source and your medical clearance is received, you will receive a start date. Typically, this is the very next scheduled IOP day. You will be asked to come approximately 45 minutes early (or stay late) for this first day to complete our orientation process.

Fees & Insurance

Most treatments are covered by major health insurance providers. If you have questions about whether your assessments or treatments will be covered, we encourage you to speak directly with our intake specialist. They will assist you in managing your costs, and answer any questions regarding payment and insurance.

After your initial assessment, and once a treatment plan is developed and initiated, we will contact your insurance provider directly for authorization of the treatment.