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

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 →

Is The Doctor In? Eating Disorders Training Amongst Medical Professionals — Part 3

The thing about critiquing systemic issues like lacking training environments for medical professionals (and others) is that we have to be cautious to not place undue blame on those who are stuck immobilized between the desire to a) train or b) get training in eating disorders. If the solution to the egregious lack of training was simple, I feel sure that someone would have done it already! What I am gesturing at, here, is that the reasons behind lacking training opportunities are deeply rooted in socio-political, historical, and economic trends and policies. Those providing training and those seeking training do not exist in some glorious black hole devoid of austerity (frugalness, restrainedness) and neoliberalism.

In this post I’ll focus on a few studies that help to illuminate why these gaps in training might exist, including dominant sentiments (in the general public, in government, in training environments themselves) toward eating disorders. … Continue reading →

Is the Doctor In? Eating Disorders Training Amongst Medical Professionals — Part 2

It is challenging for me to rein myself in when I start ranting about the poor state of affairs of eating disorder training for medical professionals. However, I reconcile my critical ranting with a paradoxical penchant for optimism. I figured, in my searching, that there must be something out there that gives us more to work with. Is there a functional model of providing training for medical professionals? At the very least, are the opportunities that do exist doing a good job at equipping healthcare providers with the skills they need to begin to navigate the complexity of eating disorders?

Building on part one, in which I highlighted 2 studies offering some challenging knowledge around how little is on offer within medical training environments, I will focus here on 2 studies about the outcomes of training. The first, a UK study, explores whether medical professionals are trained in eating … Continue reading →

Is the Doctor in? Eating Disorders Training Amongst Medical Professionals — Part 1

Something that has often shocked and, frankly, appalled, me is how little training exists for those at the front line of eating disorder service delivery. I’m talking about people like family doctors, teachers, coaches, and others who might act as key gatekeepers for eating disorder services; those who don’t make eating disorders the focus of their practice but who likely encounter people with eating disorders as a part of their work life.

When I hear horrible stories about doctors shrugging off symptoms of eating disorders because the person presenting to the office does not “look like they have an eating disorder,” I want to cry. When I talk to teacher friends about the lack of built-in training around eating disorders (sometimes they have sought out opportunities to enhance their mental health awareness, but these don’t tend to be built in), I wish I had more to offer them. When I … Continue reading →

Of Family Dynamics and Eating Disorders: Parents’ Experiences of Skills-Based Training

Parents of children with eating disorders face an extraordinarily difficult challenge; the work that they put into caring for their loved ones cannot be discounted. This can be especially challenging in the face of a social environment that tends toward parent-blaming for disorders. Further, the kinds of behaviors caregivers are obliged to encourage in the individual with an eating disorder (for example, eating calorically-dense foods in order to gain weight) are frowned upon, to say the least, in our “anti-obesity” oriented society.

There is a rich body of literature exploring caregiver well-being, including studies suggesting that increasing the availability of support in various forms from social to practical may help caregivers to navigate a complicated path toward supporting a loved one with an eating disorder. Researchers are asking key questions around what we can do to better support parents and other caregivers.

Along these lines, Goodier et al. (2014Continue reading →