Science of Eating Disorders
physician-patient relations
Patient Perspectives on Anorexia, Treatment, and Therapeutic Alliance
Dear Science of Eating Disorders readers, please welcome Andrea, our newest contributor! Below is her introduction and first post.
Hello SEDs readers, my name is Andrea and I’m excited to be contributing to the blog. I have an undergraduate degree in sociology and I am currently a Masters student studying family relations and human development. My research is looking at the experiences of young women in recovery from eating disorders, and uses qualitative methods including narrative interviews and digital stories to explore stories of eating disorders and recovery. I am particularly interested in stories that fall outside of the “norm,” as I feel that we sometimes hear a limited, scripted story of what it means to be someone who has had and recovered from an eating disorder.
I myself am recovered from ED-NOS, and I am happy to be making meaning from my experiences by exploring eating disorders in an academic way. I hope to be able to add my voice to the conversation–I’ll be looking mainly at the qualitative literature on eating disorders, their treatment, and recovery. You can …
Can Eating Disorders Be Contagious?
Treating a patient with an eating disorder can often feel like walking on eggshells; it is easy to say or do the wrong thing. I’ve covered this topic in my previous posts. In my first post, I wrote about negative attitudes that health care providers often have with regard to eating disorder patients and in my second post, I covered some ways in which caring clinicians that do work with ED patients may – usually inadvertently - negatively impact treatment, often by impairing the physician-patient/caregiver relationship.
But let’s forget about clinicians for a second, what if the treatment environment itself is damaging? Could treatment itself do more harm than good?
That’s the question that Walter Vandereycken explored in this commentary article. (This interesting paper was brought to my attention by a reader – you know who you are, so thanks!)
And just to be really clear Vandereycken doesn’t mean contagious in the infectious-disease kind of way. Coming into contact with someone who has an eating disorder is not going to put you in danger of getting an eating disorder yourself.…
How Do Anorexia Nervosa Patients Define Recovery and Engage in Treatment? The Need for Individualized Treatment
Dear Science of Eating Disorders readers, please welcome Gina, our newest contributor! Gina is looking forward to writing for the blog and enriching the content with her own unique interests, perspectives and experiences. You can find out more about Gina on the ‘About Gina‘ page and you should also check out her personal blog about eating disorder recovery (and all things related) here. You can contact Gina at gina@scienceofeds.org.
Just a note, do keep in mind that I (Tetyana) try to give as much freedom as possible to guest writers and contributors to write about their own interests and viewpoints. That means that we don’t all necessary agree; there is no joint agenda. My primary reason for wanting more contributors is to broader the content, vary the writing styles and negate the individual biases we all have that are the result of our differing eating disorder histories, experiences with treatment and educational backgrounds. Our desire to understand, translate and summarize peer-reviewed ED literature is what we all share in common.
One difficulty in measuring rates of recovery for patients …
When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good – Part 2 (Risks Associated with Treatment)
My previous post on the effectiveness of residential treatment centers (RTCs) generated a lot of discussion. A point that was raised several times, on the blog, on Facebook and other forums was the fact that there are risks in choosing an RTC for treatment.
Laura Collins did a great job of articulating some of the risks in her comment:
There risks are not specific to RTCs. They hold true for inpatient treatment, partial hospitalization and to a lesser extent, outpatient treatment. I thought it would be nice to explore in more depth some of the risks associated with treatment. If you are receiving treatment or are the caregiver of someone who is, hopefully this will help you in recognizing what to avoid and when to seek alternative treatment options.
Inadvertent effects that are associated with the treatment itself, whether it is due to medication or actions of the physician/healthcare provider, are called iatrogenic.
Also, if you are wondering about Part 1, you can check it out here: When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good (Attitudes Toward Patients with Eating Disorders). …
When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good (Attitudes Toward Patients with Eating Disorders)
I was going to blog more about mortality rates in eating disorder patients, but recent ED-related deaths have left a bitter taste in my mouth (huge understatement). So, I’ve decided instead to write about a paper requested by the founder of The Joy Project on clinician reactions to patients with eating disorders by Thomspon-Brenner and colleagues that came out this year.
If you have an eating disorder or are close to someone with an eating disorder, you’ve likely heard many stories about dismissive or down-right negative and harmful attitudes that clinicians often have toward patients with EDs.
I’ve experienced it myself: I had to find another doctor to refer me to an outpatient clinic, because the first one didn’t – he didn’t think I needed help (probably because I was very aware that things were not heading in the right direction even before I was at a low weight). Needless to say, my new doctor refereed me ASAP, thankfully, and by the time I got diagnosed, I more than fit the diagnostic criteria. So there’s that: a clinician standing …
- Transitioning from Adolescent to Adult Eating Disorder Treatment Programs: What Are The Challenges?
- Bingeing and Purging: Keeping the “Positives” and Eliminating The Negatives?
- Dancing Your Way to Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- Pills for Bites: The Alarming Link between Drug Abuse and Eating Disorders
- Factors Associated with Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- Patient Perspectives on Anorexia, Treatment, and Therapeutic Alliance
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- Nonpurging Bulimia Nervosa: Where Does It Fit?
- What’s The Point of Bingeing and Purging? And Why Can’t You Just Stop?
- Should Insurance Companies Cover Residential Treatment for Eating Disorders?
- Does Too Much Exposure to Thin Models Cause Eating Disorders? Anorexia, Bulimia in Blind Women
- Are All Anorexics Just Afraid Of Being Fat and Can We Blame The Western Media?
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 2
- When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good (Attitudes Toward Patients with Eating Disorders)
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- The “Double Life” of Bulimia Nervosa: Patients’ Perspectives
- How Can We Treat Chronic and Severe Anorexia Nervosa? (On the Need for New Approaches)
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 1
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Extreme Medical Negligence: Failure to Feed Patients with Anorexia Nervosa
They are crazy stories, really. It is hard to believe they are true.
A 28-year-old woman with anorexia nervosa complained about weakness and nausea following the insertion of a feeding tube. Her gastroenterologist sent her to the emergency room (ER). The woman was in the emergency room for two days without receiving any food. She was discharged home after she was told her lab tests and X-rays came back normal. Unfortunately, her X-rays weren’t normal. Her gastroenterologist determined she had a bowel obstruction and sent her back to the hospital. She lost a substantial amount of weight in those 3 days.
The second story is even worse.
A 26-year-old woman with a feeding tube was discharged prematurely from a residential facility. She began to feel dizzy and weak, and was admitted to a hospital. She did not receive any food for the 6 days she was there, despite extremely low blood sugar levels (half of what is defined as the threshold for low blood sugar). For reasons that are not clear, an order for tube feeding was cancelled and two days after …