Treatment Options
Eating Recovery Center In the News: The Mind of the Matter
Eating Disorders: Hope for Recovery
Last week, Eating Recovery Center’s Dr. Craig Johnson, Chief Clinical Officer, spoke with Dr. Susan Hickman on her VoiceAmerica radio show, “The Mind of the Matter.” The segment focused on the unprecedented growth of eating disorders, especially in child and adolescent patient populations, as well as developments in eating disorder research and treatment approaches. Listen to the segment below.
Posted in Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, In the News, Latest Research, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: The Huffington Post
“Eating Disorders Treatment for Children and Adolescents”
In the latest installment of his Huffington Post blog, Dr. Weiner welcomes the insights of Elizabeth Easton, PsyD, on treatment for eating disorders in children and adolescents. As Clinical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center’s Behavioral Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Dr. Easton understands that parents seeking eating disorders treatment for their children and teens face a distinctive set of uncertainties. Read an excerpt of Dr. Easton’s insights below, or click here to read the Huffington Post article in its entirety.
How are child and adolescent eating disorders treatment different from treating eating disorders in adults?
The fundamental aspects of eating disorders treatment tend to be fairly consistent between adults and children and/or teens. Because these illnesses affect both mind and body, treatment providers will generally offer medical support, psychiatric stabilization and medication. Therapeutic support is also offered from skilled clinicians, including individual therapists, family
therapists and dietitians. However, key differences between programs designed for adults and those catering to younger patient populations pertain to the use of developmentally appropriate treatment plans and the availability of education services to help patients progress in K-12 studies during the course of treatment.
Developmentally sound care requires that the treatment team take into consideration not only the chronological age of patients, but also their developmental stage and their readiness to assume key responsibilities in the recovery process. Some patients who are either chronologically or developmentally young may require more assistance from parents regarding key
elements of the recovery process, like refeeding, weight maintenance and compliance with the post-discharge plan of care. Furthermore, seeking effective treatment for your child or teen doesn’t mean that a child or teen’s academic functioning must suffer. Unlike programs for adults, child and adolescent eating disorders treatment can involve an educational component to help patients move forward with their studies to support a seamless transition back to school following treatment.
What should parents look for in an eating disorders treatment center or provider?
Comprehensive care from skilled experts is the most important element to look for when seeking eating disorders treatment for your child or adolescent. Eating disorders are incredibly complex illnesses, and it’s critical to identify a provider with experience treating the diseases in young patient populations and a record of successful treatment outcomes.
Another characteristic that parents should look for in a treatment provider is an educational component. By this, I mean two things. First, look for programs that make a point of educating parents and families about eating disorders and how to support the recovery of their young loved ones following discharge from treatment. Lasting eating disorders recovery for your child hinges in large part on you gaining a thorough understanding of the illness, as well as learning about and practicing effective strategies for helping to manage recovery. Secondly, treatment programs should offer a structured educational component with adequate support from licensed educators to help young patients maintain academic functioning while in treatment. Intensive eating disorders treatment can be disruptive in the life of a child or teen, and every effort should be made to support them in this area of their lives.
Read more from Dr. Easton on The Huffington Post.
Posted in Anorexia Nervosa, Binge Eating, Bulimia Nervosa, General, Huffington Post, In the News, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: PsychCentral
“The Impact Of ‘Fat Talk’ On Kids & What Parents Can Do”
This month’s Fat Talk Free Week resulted in a number of articles featuring Eating Recovery Center experts commenting on the impact of fat talk – or disparaging body-, weight- or shape-related comments – particularly on children. In the interview excerpt below, Elizabeth Easton, PsyD, Clinical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center, discusses whether fat talk is a new phenomenon, its effect on kids, how parents can help and much more. Click here to read Dr. Easton’s interview in its entirety.
Q: Do you think there’s more fat talk today then there was a few decades or even a decade ago? Is this a new phenomenon?
A: I do believe “fat talk” has increased in the last decade, for both adults and children. I’m not sure it’s a “new phenomenon” because it’s human nature to want something different than what we have. Straight-haired woman envy curly-haired women; curly-haired women envy straight-haired women, etc. We generally look for what is more envied or valued, and then strive for that.
“Skinniness” has been highly valued in our society for several decades, but now it’s not just in magazines and on television. It’s on the Internet and readily assessable through blogs, tweets, websites about dieting and even pro-eating disorders websites. If desired, people can be inundated with “fat talk” 24 hours a day with just one “click.”
Q: What are the consequences of fat talk?
A: Any time we contribute to the dialogue about “skinny is pretty,” we are devaluing body acceptance. We learn how to assess our bodies based on our environment. If we buy into or even just allow “fat talk” to occur around us, we are creating an environment that perpetuates “good” versus “bad” body types.
Negative body image is an easy hook for individuals who struggle with self-esteem or identity to latch onto as a way to feel more confident and even accepted by others.
I hear children and teens talk about this dynamic daily at Eating Recovery Center’s Behavioral Hospital for Children and Adolescents. Somewhere along the way they learned: skinny equals acceptance.
Posted in General, In the News, Latest Research, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: Chesapeake Family
“Does Your Child Have an Eating Disorder?”
The insights of Dr. Ovidio Bermudez, Medical Director of Child and Adolescent Services, were recently featured in a Chesapeake Family magazine article discussing the incidence of eating disorders in children, the warning signs for which parents should watch, and treatment options for this young patient population. Read on for a short excerpt, or click here to view the article in its entirety.
According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), as many as 10 million females and one million males in the United States are struggling with eating disorders.
It may begin subtly enough. Your teenage daughter starts concealing her body beneath several layers of clothes. Your teenage son becomes obsessed with exercise and weight lifting. Perhaps you find packages of laxatives in your teen’s room. Or maybe your daughter no longer wants to eat with the family when you order pizza—a weekly ritual that she used to love. You may think that your son or daughter is just “going through a phase.” After all, the teenage years are a turbulent time, and teens seem to change their moods and behaviors from day to day. But don’t be so quick to dismiss any unusual occurrences as passing phases. All of these behaviors are red flags and may be signs that your teen is struggling with an eating disorder.
Many people believe that eating disorders are not “real” illnesses or that they are just fads. Others acknowledge that the illnesses are serious, but they believe that such conditions only affect females.
“There are many misconceptions regarding eating disorders,” says Dr. Ovidio Bermudez, Medical Director of Child and Adolescent Services for Eating Recovery Center in Denver, Colo. “Researchers are still learning and accumulating information. We know more now than we did 10 years ago, but there is still much we don’t know, still much more we need to learn. However, we do know that everyone is at risk. Eating disorders affect people of all races and ethnicities. And they don’t just affect girls and young women. They also affect children, older women and men.”
Posted in General, In the News, Treatment Options •
Dr. Jennifer McBride Transitions to Full-Time Internal Medicine Role at Eating Recovery Center
Internist with background in eating disorders treatment brings valuable skill set to Center’s comprehensive programs
Eating Recovery Center (www.EatingRecoveryCenter.com), a national center for eating disorders recovery providing comprehensive treatment for anorexia and bulimia, today announced that Jennifer McBride, MD, has been promoted from a part-time role to serve as a full-time internist for patients ages 10 through adult. Although Dr. McBride will provide medical care to patients at all levels of care, her new role also supports the expansion of the Center’s adult Inpatient and Residential programs from 24 to 29 beds. The Center recently added the five beds due to an increased need for inpatient eating disorders treatment.
“Dr. McBride’s specialized eating disorders treatment expertise is a tremendous asset as she works to restore health among Eating Recovery Center’s medically compromised patients,” said Kenneth L. Weiner, MD, FAED, CEDS, chief executive officer, chief medical officer and founding partner of Eating Recovery Center. “Her transition into a full-time role enables us to continue to provide comprehensive care to the growing population of individuals who struggle with these serious diseases.”
Dr. McBride, who is Board-certified in internal medicine, has more than seven years of experience as an internist at Exempla Denver Medical Associates in Denver, Colo. She has provided part-time care and internal medicine expertise to patients at Eating Recovery Center since it opened its doors in 2008.
In addition to supporting Eating Recovery Center’s inpatient and residential eating disorders patients, Dr. McBride will be an available resource for patients in the Center’s Partial Hospitalization and Outpatient eating disorders treatment programs, as well as patients at the Center’s Behavioral Hospital for Children and Adolescents.
“Eating disorders are complicated diseases with serious medical implications. By working with internists who are familiar with the complications of these illnesses, our patients can seamlessly transition to lower levels of care,” said Dr. McBride. “Similarly, those patients who have discharged from Eating Recovery Center’s treatment programs can rest assured that their ongoing outpatient medical needs are met by a team with strong expertise in eating disorders care.”
Dr. McBride earned her master’s degree at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, with a major in communications disorders and audiology. She completed her doctorate in medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 2001 and her residency at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital.
Posted in General, Press Releases, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: KUSA-TV Denver (NBC)
Helping Eating Disorders Sufferers Heal
In a recent interview with KUSA-TV Denver (Ch. 9), a local NBC affiliate, Eating Recovery Center’s Dr. Ken Weiner discusses warning signs of and treatment options for eating disorders, as well as strategies for minimizing the risk of eating disorders among children and confronting someone you believe may be suffering from an eating disorder.
Read a short article and watch Dr. Weiner’s interview in its entirety here.
Posted in Anorexia Nervosa, Binge Eating, In the News, Treatment Options •
Summit Eating Disorders and Outreach Program Expands Treatment Options Through Partnership with Eating Recovery Center
Partnership formalizes a longstanding collaborative relationship between the two eating disorders treatment centers
Eating Recovery Center, a national center for eating disorders recovery providing comprehensive treatment for anorexia and bulimia, today announced that it has partnered with Summit Eating Disorders and Outreach Program. Summit is a nationally recognized center for eating disorders treatment and prevention located in Sacramento, Cali.
This partnership allows Summit to expand its partial hospitalization and outpatient treatment options. It also underscores Eating Recovery Center’s ongoing commitment to providing and supporting access to expert eating disorders recovery services.
“We have come to regard Summit as a highly reputable eating disorders treatment center in the Northern California area,” said Craig Johnson, PhD, FAED, CEDS, chief clinical officer of Eating Recovery Center. “We see tremendous value in not only the Summit team’s clinical approach, but also its community awareness and prevention programming.”
Founded in 2000, Summit is the only medically supervised treatment program in the Sacramento area serving adolescents and adults with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. The treatment center is led by founding partners, Tony Paulson, PhD, executive director, Lisa Peterson, PhD, clinical director, and Jennifer Lombardi, MFT, chief admissions officer.
“Partnering with Eating Recovery Center allows Summit to enhance and further develop our partial hospitalization and outpatient programming by incorporating clinical models developed by the Center’s leadership team,” said Dr. Paulson. “Additionally, the Center’s intensive inpatient and residential programs are valuable resources for Summit’s adult and adolescent patients requiring a higher level of care. We believe this continuity of care is critical in supporting lasting eating disorders recovery.”
Summit’s eating disorders treatment programs offer:
• Comprehensive medical, nutritional and psychological care.
• A philosophy rooted in evidence-based treatments including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Family Based Treatment.
• Treatments for co-morbid psychological issues, including: anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
• Individualized treatment plans.
• Collaboration with community partners.
“Summit provides highly effective outpatient care to eating disordered patients and is a trusted treatment resource for the community of referring professionals,” said Kenneth L. Weiner, MD, FAED, CEDS, founding partner, chief medical officer and chief executive officer of Eating Recovery Center. “This partnership facilitates expanded reach for the clinical models that have proven highly successful in treating patients at Eating Recovery Center.”
For more information about Eating Recovery Center, visit www.EatingRecoveryCenter.com. To learn more about Summit Eating Disorders and Outreach Program, visit www.sedop.org.
Posted in About Us, General, Press Releases, Treatment Options •
Program Design Supporting Emerging Eating Disorder Pathology in Children and Adolescents
Nationally recognized thought leader in the care of individuals with eating disorders, Ovidio Bermudez, MD, FAAP, FSAHM, FAED, CEDS, serves as Medical Director of Eating Recovery Center’s Child and Adolescent Services. In the Q&A below, Dr. Bermudez describes the pervasive gap in services that led to the creation of Eating Recovery Center’s Behavioral Hospital for Children and Adolescents and details the innovative program design that seeks to meet the distinctive needs of the young eating disordered population as the pathology of these illnesses continues to evolve.
Q: Describe the challenges to effective treatment for children and adolescents.
A: It seems to me that one of the challenges for the field of eating disorders is to better understand and address how eating disorders have been changing. These changes include demographic shifts, with the illnesses affecting both genders, all ages and people from all walks of life, as well as changing symptomatology such as growing creativity in ways of avoiding calories and in compensatory behaviors. These changes are particularly salient when it comes to the young, and we expect to see this salience more formally reflected when the DSM-V is rolled out in 2013. At that time, eating-related pathology in children will take a broader perspective than it has in the past to include what had been known as “eating disturbances of childhood” under the umbrella of eating disorders. In my opinion, this shift is a reflection of not just the growing number of children and young adolescents that we are seeing affected by eating disorders, but also of a broader depth and breadth of eating disorder-related symptomatology in this young and relatively poorly studied population. There has historically been a quantitative gap in services, as the number of available specialized beds in the United States for the severely ill young adolescents, and especially for children, has been limited. In addition to the ongoing quantitative gap in service delivery, I believe today we are also realizing the need to tackle the added challenge of a qualitative gap in services. As this pathology evolves, we see quite a number of difficult cases in children and young adolescents that require clinical expertise, creativity, conducive facilities and strong treatment teams to be able to address these cases in a meaningful way once this level of care is required. This is especially true in light of a general lack of evidence to guide us.
Q: How did the gap in services in the treatment landscape inform the program design for Eating Recovery Center’s Behavioral Hospital for Children and Adolescents?
A: To address the aforementioned gap in services, we opened the dedicated child and adolescent eating disorders treatment facility in January of this year. Months of meticulous planning yielded a program that acknowledges what we know to be true in regards to the evolving pathology of these illnesses in young people. Even so, we were surprised by the richness of clinical presentation in the young patients admitted to the center so far. This complexity includes varied family circumstances at play, as well as varied medical and psychiatric comorbidities like self-harm, oppositional defiant disorders, a wide range of food restrictions, diabetes and cystic fibrosis, among other. All of which are accompanied by the expected coexistence of significant clinical anxiety, fears and phobias and the movement-driven, compulsive exercising component. Fortunately, our program design anticipated and is capable of addressing many of these needs and by individualizing care are able to address the diverse array of clinical presentations. The program leverages creative approaches like the use of the small-team “village” structure to maintain a high staff to patient ratio, a family empowerment model and a strong psychotherapy component to address the specific needs of each patient and family. Another example of a creative approach is the use of “video game”-like biofeedback as an anxiety management tool, which has been very well received by our young patients and has served as a means for engaging them in their treatment plans. Optimal medical management and nutritional rehabilitation are also mainstays of the program.
Q: Describe the concept of developmentally appropriate treatment plans for child and young adolescent patients?
A: One of our focuses in assessing and working with readiness for change in the field of eating disorders treatment has been differentiating between willingness and ability. Many young people struggling with eating disorders also struggle with developmental issues like concreteness, alexithymia and acting out behaviors. Assessment and formulation of developmentally appropriate treatment plans is critical in addressing the needs of our young patients at Eating Recovery Center, and thus specialized tracks have been developed to address the developmentally young. It’s about meeting patients where they are at developmentally. I will be addressing the topic of readiness for change in eating disorders treatment in greater detail at the upcoming third annual Rocky Mountain Eating Disorders Conference, which will be held August 19-20, 2011 in beautiful Denver, Colorado. This year will be my third year in attendance and as a speaker, and I would highly recommend this conference to all professionals in the eating disorder treatment field for both its richness of content and outstanding networking opportunities.
Click here for more information about Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center.
Posted in About Us, General, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: The Other Paper
“Fixing Fat Kids”
Ovidio Bermudez, MD, FAAP, FSAHM, FAED, CEDS, Medical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center, recently lent his expert commenary to The Other Paper in an article profiling obesity and bariatric surgery among children and adolescents:
“Most children don’t go to bed one night well and wake up the next morning binge eaters. That’s not the way we get there,” he said by phone from Brazil Wednesday morning, where he was visiting family. “Most people who end up with an eating disorder started with emotional eating. One of the roads to eating related pathology starts with learning to manage emotions with food. That is kind of the way it begins.”
Bermudez said the pathways to obesity are varied and include factors such as genetic traits, lifestyle issues (eating too much and moving too little), physiological traits such as metabolism, emotional issues that facilitate overeating to compensate, and true mental disorders that manifest as eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia and, in the case of obesity, binge eating.
“After 20-plus years of working with people with eating disorders, under my care, I’ve never had a person with anorexia or bulimia die. But I’ve had several people with obesity die,” said Bermudez. “This is really dangerous. This is a really serious issue.”
Read more here.
Posted in Binge Eating, In the News, Treatment Options •
Eating Recovery Center In the News: EverydayHealth.com
Seeking Help for Eating Disorders: What Are the Levels of Care?
In her weekly EverydayHealth.com blog, The Truth About Eating Disorders, Julie Holland explores a key question to ask when seeking eating disorder treatment: What level of care is best for me or my loved one? Read an excerpt below, or click here to read the blog post in its entirety.
With all the decisions that are part of seeking help for eating disorders, it’s important to do your research, get the details and ask questions. A crucial step in finding the best treatment center is understanding the eating disorders programs or levels of care that are available. Not all treatment centers offer all levels of care nor is every program the right fit for every person.
Posted in EverydayHealth.com, In the News, Treatment Options •
