Month: October 2015

We’re In This Together: Collaborative Care for Eating Disorders

Andrea 2 Comments

This week I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Janet Treasure on collaborative care in eating disorders. Treasure focused her workshop on supporting caregivers of people with eating disorders, offering practical skills for carers and clinicians alike to improve interactions with those with eating disorders. Though I am neither a carer nor a clinicians, I got a lot out of the workshop, and it reminded me of a few of Treasure’s articles I’ve read over the years, and how much I appreciate her strong focus on working collaboratively with patients and families to facilitate recovery.

I especially appreciated how she aims to integrate those with lived experience (of either having an eating disorder or caring for someone with an eating disorder) in research and treatment design. Some of her journal articles, including this article on the potential for harm in existing treatment models, even include former patients as … Continue reading →

Poverty and Eating Disorders in Hong Kong

Jacqueline

Eating disorders are typically seen as an illness of the middle class, with most patients coming from that socioeconomic group. However, the invisibility of poorer patients within eating disorder research in part reflects the barriers to treatment that they face, including both cost and lower levels of awareness. This paper, written by a Hong Kong social work professor, Joyce Ma, focuses less on the process of eating disorder recovery, highlighting instead the context of treatment. She discusses how family dynamics and socioeconomic status come into play in her encounters with 7 Hong Kong teenagers from low-income families.

While her sample size is very small, it reveals a more diverse — and less body image-focused –disease pathway than most American studies, with Ma breaking down the precipitating factors as follows (patient numbers in brackets):

  • Constipation (1)
  • Desire to be thin (3, 7)
  • Relationship issues (6)
  • Parental conflicts (5)
  • Poverty (2, 4)
… Continue reading →

Not Horsing Around: Using Equine Therapy For Eating Disorders

Andrea 5 Comments

It’s possible that some of you are already rolling your eyes: I know my audience. In the calls for evidence-based treatment, alternative therapies are often sidelined, deemed less important or less effective. While I certainly see that side of the argument, and would advocate for a continued search for treatment efficacy, I’m not ready to abandon the search for alternative approaches. Especially when used in concert with other treatments, I find alternative therapies very intriguing, partially for what they tell us about the complexity of treating eating disorders.

In a recent study, Lac, Marble & Boie (2013) explored the use of equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP) for eating disorders. Keep in mind that as is the case with many alternative therapies, the article is based on a case study, rather than a large-scale clinical trial. To me, the point of these types of articles is to get us thinking differently … Continue reading →