How this site can help you
Through the years, I have treated many hundreds of eating disordered
children, adolescents and adults who have met with treatment failures
elsewhere. I have created this site to dispel the many myths about
eating disorders and how to heal them, and to rekindle emotional
connections between patients and families that could facilitate an
effective and timely recovery. With or without a formal and complete
eating disorder diagnosis,
you need to know whether eating disorder specialty treatment is the
treatment of choice… if so, you need to know how to seek, to find,
and/or to administer the most expert treatment available.
This site contains information that will offer you a foundation of
knowledge, a plan of action, and insights into the quality of one’s own
personal (or professional) journey through what can typically prove to be a
difficult, though gratifying healing process. The tools and strategies you
will find here WORK…they are the product of scientific research as well as
42 years of my professional experience in successfully treating eating
disordered individuals and their families.
Empowered healing will not only improve one’s relationship with food and
eating, but will help the patient restore a deep and integrative emotional
connection with his or her own core self. This
makes eating disorder recovery one of the greatest investments an individual
can make in a healthier now, as well as in a gratified future.
Patients claim to get their life
back; families claim to get their child back.
Some
Basic Truths
Eating disorders are fully curable
in 80 percent of cases that are recognized and treated in an effective and
timely manner.
Knowledge is power.
It is essential that you as a patient, parent or professional,
educate yourself (and your child or patients) about these disorders in
preparation to heal or recover from them, restoring quality of life, now and
for the future.
Effective treatment and recovery processes demand a mastery of treatment
skills unique to eating disorders, including an understanding of family
systems theory and the inclusion of parents and families in a healing
process. The most pivotal factor in a timely and sustainable recovery is the
quality of the therapeutic relationship or the healing connection.
Eating disorders are family system disorders, though all too frequently
parents and families are excluded from the treatment process, resulting in
their defeatism and confusion and a poorer prognosis for the afflicted child
living at home.
Enlightened and proactive parents
invariably become Most Valuable Players on any professional treatment team.