5 Ways Eating Disorder Treatment Centers are Falling Short (And What To Do About It)
While treatment for eating disorders is, thankfully, improving every year, recovery centers are still missing the mark on some key issues. It leaves many women to their own resources as they endeavor to reach full remission from a sort of quasi-recovery state.
As such, after multiple relapses provoked by inadequate treatment programs… Here’s the 5 things I personally had to work on:
1. Competition & Shame
Throw someone struggling with an eating disorder into a room full of thin women who don’t eat, and what do you get? Rampant, unhealthy comparison.
It becomes a who’s who of the sickest, thinnest, and least cooperative patients. Honestly, it never made sense to me to stick patients in with a crowd of women who are also struggling. It was more of a motivation to stay sick than anything. And God forbid you decided to cooperate, lest you be ostracized as the “fat one.”
I feel like healthy examples were always my best comfort and greatest inspiration. And no, the try-hard dietitian who casually carries Boost shakes around in her purse does NOT count as inspiration.
2. How-To
All that competition also makes a spectacle of all the ways to have an eating disorder.
Honestly, I think this is the worst offense in current eating disorder treatment programs. There are so many creative and sneaky behaviors I learned in treatment that I never would have ventured had I not seen other women flaunting them. There were many days I left treatment with more than one new way to relapse.
3. Impersonal
Can we just get the obvious out there? So many programs are run like factories: get the information, do an intake analysis, take the money, enter the program. Not much is left in the way of personalization, which I think this is a HUGE miss.
YES, renourishment is top priority and incredibly well achieved at these centers. But eating disorders are an illness of the mind, and eating alone will never completely heal someone.
4. Improper Diagnosis
*Sigh* I have so much to say about this topic. It’s been increasingly brought to my awareness that patients recovering from anorexia are being treated for binge eating disorder. So, instead of encouraging women to eat despite their fears, while their bodies are compensating for however long they endured malnourishment… they’re being put on diets and told to be vigilant about overeating. I was one such casualty of this misunderstanding, and it threw me for a loop, to say the least.
I go way more in depth on this in my ebook, but the absolute LAST thing a recovering anorexic should be taught is to control their eating right when they’re beginning to allow themselves some freedom.
It circles right back to the lack of personalization: there’s a set script, and instead of empowering women, all the power and authority is held by the treatment team.
5. Absolute Focus
My last contention with the current modality is the complete focus on, and attention given to the disorder. Women need to learn who they are apart from their eating issues. They should be encouraged to grow, to dream, and to experience joy.
You can read more about this in my blog post here, but when all is said and done: you can know exactly how to recover, but if you have nothing to live for, you have nothing to recover for.
In the end, no treatment center is perfect. That’s why it’s SO IMPORTANT to find empowering resources to help finish the job after receiving treatment.
I want you to know:
It’s not your fault if treatment programs didn’t automatically heal you.
I promise, robust remission is possible for you.
If you want to go from weight restored to remission, you can learn my three steps to full recovery by reading my ebook here. 👇🏼
💜
Maria
