Treatment Centers for Eating Disorders

The process of treating an eating disorder at an ED rehab can vary depending on several factors, like the facility one chooses, the nature and severity of eating disorders, etc. Most rehabs follow the following steps to ensure that a person completes full recovery:

• Initial assessment and treatment plan: This step usually involves conducting a pre-assessment to understand the type of ED a person suffers from and its severity, along with their past medical and psychiatric history. Using this information, an expert panel makes a treatment plan that best benefits a patient.
• Identifying resources: Following the development of a treatment plan, experts may discover the resources available for a patient in their community to meet their goals.
• Maintaining aftercare: Most psychiatric issues, including ED, require long-term care and management. To ensure that each patient receives the right level of care, the team compiles an aftercare plan to help them remain healthy and active even after they leave rehab.

Following are some components of an ideal ED program offered by most eating disorders recovery centers:

Psychological Therapy

Since an eating disorder is a mental health issue with underlying psychological roots and triggers, its treatment must involve psychotherapy with a mental health expert regularly. Depending on the severity, these sessions may last from a few weeks or months to years. The purpose of therapy is to help a person:

• Replace their unhealthy habits with healthy ones
• Normalize the underlying eating patterns to target a healthy weight
• Improve the overall mood
• Rekindle broken relationships
• Develop healthier problem-solving skills
• Learn how to monitor the underlying mood and eating
• Explore healthier techniques and strategies to cope with stressful circumstances

Most ED treatment plans involve a personalized approach or combination of various therapies, such as the following:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy: This type of psychotherapy focuses on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with their underlying eating disorder. After helping a patient acquire healthy eating behavior, it helps them learn how to identify and change distorted thoughts that may have led to these problems in the first place.
• Group cognitive behavioral therapy: This type of psychotherapy involves attending counseling sessions with other people struggling with similar eating disorders. These group sessions help people acknowledge that they are not alone in their struggles and allow them to seek support and advice from each other. The connections people form during these sessions sometimes remain for life and serve as support systems.
• Family-based therapy: During this therapy, family members help their loved ones learn to restore healthy eating patterns and apply them to achieve a healthy weight. This type of therapy is particularly beneficial in underage patients, such as teenagers.

Nutrition Education

The best eating disorder treatment center includes clinical staff, registered dieticians and other nutrition specialists on their treatment team to help clients understand their eating disorders and help them come up with a plan to maintain healthy eating habits. The following are some goals of nutrition education at most ED treatment centers:

• Slowly work toward achieving a healthy weight
• Learn and practice meal planning
• Understand how nutrition affects the body,
• Establish regular eating patterns, such as three meals a day with regular snacking in between
• Correct health problems secondary to malnutrition or obesity caused by an eating disorder
• Take steps to avoid bingeing or dieting

Medications

Some rehabs for eating disorders provide medications to help a person recover effectively from the underlying disorder. However, remember that medications alone cannot heal these disorders, and they must always be combined with simultaneous psychotherapy. Antidepressants are the most common group of medications a rehab may provide to people with purging or binge-eating behaviors. Moreover, these medications may also help those with bulimia nervosa, as most of them usually suffer from underlying issues of depression or anxiety. Some people with anorexia nervosa may also need medications to address issues occurring secondary to their eating disorder.

Day Treatment Programs

Many treatment centers for eating disorders provide their clients with day treatment programs that extend over a couple of hours every day, multiple times a week. These intensive outpatient programs may include individual and group therapy, medical care, nutrition education, nutritional therapy, and structured eating sessions.

Residential Treatment Programs

Residential treatment at eating disorder rehabs can help a person engage in therapy while living on-site under 24/7 expert supervision. These programs are typically beneficial for people who require long-term medical stabilization for a chronic or severe eating disorder. Residential care is also ideal for people who have been to the hospital multiple times or have sought lesser-intensive treatments in the past with no success.