If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder—or symptoms that strongly suggest you may have one— treatment is crucial to your health and well-being. In severe cases, it may even save your life. Let’s take a closer look at the treatment options available for eating disorders.
Your options vary depending on your situation. For example, if your eating disorder has seriously compromised your physical health or resulted in potentially life-threatening medical issues (e.g. severe malnourishment or dehydration), you may only have one option at the moment—inpatient treatment. Serious medical issues are always a top priority. As a result, the psychological issues can’t be fully addressed until any medical conditions are stabilized at an eating disorder treatment center.If your situation isn’t quite so dire, then it’s good to understand all the types of treatment options that are available. You, along with your doctor and/or therapist, can then determine the best treatment approach. This will be based on several factors, including the type of eating disorder you have, your specific symptoms and treatment needs, your financial resources and your personal goals.
Therapy For Eating Disorders
Several different therapeutic approaches can treat eating disorders, including:
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
CBT is a relatively short term therapy that helps you identify negative thoughts and feelings, irrational beliefs and unhealthy behaviors that fuel your disordered eating. As these are identified, your therapist will help you replace them with healthier ways of thinking and behaving. Research has shown that CBT is very effective in treating a variety of psychiatric disorders, including eating disorders.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy
Stemming from the work of Sigmund Freud, this type of therapy centers around the relationship between you and your therapist as a significant part of the overall therapeutic process. Highly insight-oriented, psychodynamic approaches explores issues pertaining to your emotional/psychological development as well as subconscious and unconscious factors that can play an important role in your feelings, relationships and behaviors. Psychodynamic therapy is usually a long-term process.
Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)
Interpersonal psychotherapy focuses on identifying and addressing relationship issues that play an underlying role in your eating disorder. For example, family conflict, romantic relationships and rejections, life transitions (e.g. starting college or getting a divorce), significant losses and unresolved grief are all things that can trigger or influence an eating disorder. Addressing and resolving these issues are key to overcoming your disordered eating.
Family therapy
This type of therapy often plays a very important role in treating eating disorders, particularly in children, adolescents, or young adults who still live at home. Family dynamics, such as communication problems, control issues, and conflict, are addressed as family members all take part in the therapy process. Family therapy is especially helpful for parents in terms of helping them understand the problem and best support their struggling son or daughter. Along the same lines, couples therapy can be beneficial by having your spouse or significant other partake in the therapy process.
Treatment Options For Eating Disorders
The above-mentioned therapies are available in a variety of treatment settings. These include:
Residential Treatment
Because of the complexity and unique challenges of eating disorders, and the frequent need for an intensive and multi-disciplinary approach, residential treatment programs can be particularly effective. Rather than meeting with a therapist, nutritionist and other treatment providers once a week, and returning home each day (which may or may not be a supportive environment), a residential program allows you to live in a therapeutic setting with all of your treatment providers in one place.
The pace is much more intense than outpatient treatment. Not to mention, residential programs give you a break from the demands of your day to day life. This allows you to focus exclusively on your treatment and recovery. Residential treatment is often necessary if you’re not making progress (or getting worse) with outpatient treatment only, or if you’ve been in and out of the hospital and haven’t gotten better. Residential treatment can also be particularly helpful if you have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder, such as depression or anxiety.
Hospitalization/Inpatient Treatment
Eating disorders can cause serious medical issues, especially over time or when the symptoms are severe. For example, anorexia nervosa is one of the most deadly psychiatric disorders because of the toll it can take on your body if left untreated. Extreme malnutrition, dangerous electrolyte imbalances and heart failure can all be fatal.
Hospitalization is necessary when serious psychiatric or medical issues are present that require 24/7 monitoring. Patients who refuse to eat, are suicidal, or are dangerously underweight typically need hospitalization. Once the urgent issues are stabilized, residential or outpatient treatment can be started or resumed.
Hospital Day Treatment
Another fairly intensive treatment option for eating disorders is hospital day treatment. Unlike residential treatment, you go home each night rather than stay at the facility. During the day, you attend your treatment program for several hours. This can be an ideal treatment option if:
- You require more structure and intensity than outpatient treatment
- You need or want to work or attend school during the course of your treatment
Get the Help You Need Today With Promises Behavioral Health
If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, the sooner you get into treatment, the better. Call us today at 844.875.5609 for more information.