Eating Disorder Therapist: Finding the Right Team to Help Your Teen by Kendra DeFrank, MA, LCPC
Left: Lisa Carroll Right: Kendra DeFrank
Co-Owners, Lotus Therapy Group
If you are a parent that just googled “eating disorder treatment near me” you are most likely feeling scared, lost, and looking for direction. As an eating disorder specialist, I want to help you understand your next steps and what effective treatment should look like. Every time a parent calls our office looking for treatment, some commonly asked questions arise. One of these is “How do you treat eating disorders?”. Lotus Therapy Group takes a team approach to treating eating disorders, as half of the work is done with a therapist and the other half with a dietitian. The therapists role is to address the underlying issues behind the eating disorder and work on healing those issues, whether they are self-esteem related, trauma related, or are rooted in anxiety or depression. The dietitian’s role is to help your child develop a healthy relationship with food and make sure their body is in good health. An eating disorder therapist and an eating disorder dietitian should closely collaborate with each other so both parties know what is happening at all times.
A good way to know if the treatment team you are looking to work with specializes in treating eating disorders is to ask them what percentage of their case load are clients with eating disorders and if they have both a therapist and a dietitian at the same office. Once you have found the right team, treatment typically looks like one appointment a week with the therapist and one appointment a week with the dietitian. The frequency could be higher if needed, but for the majority of clients once per week with each member of the team is enough. This brings me to the next frequently asked question, which is “How are you different from a hospital program?”. Lotus Therapy Group is an outpatient treatment facility, which means clients typically come to us to avoid a hospital or “higher level of care" or come to us after coming out of a higher level of care so they have a team to continue helping them post hospitalization. Hospital programs are great in providing medical stabilization if needed and to put a quick halt to dangerous eating disorder behaviors, but the downside many parents see to programs such as these are things like disrupting school (as many programs are 24 hour care or full day) and the lack of individualized care (as hospital programs are group based). Many parents prefer to start treatment off in the least restrictive way possible by doing outpatient therapy and using the treatment team to help guide them to the right hospital or higher level of care if that ends up being needed. Lotus Therapy Group constantly meets with higher level of care programs so we know which ones are the best quality and which ones our clients do best at. With all this being said, Lotus Therapy Group prides ourselves on our ability to keep 90 percent of our clients from ever needing a higher level of care. If a client comes to us from a higher level of care, we are responsible for working with the client to help them reach full recovery. No hospital or higher level of care, no matter the quality of the program, produces a fully recovered individual. Many clients find that a higher level of care starts the process of recovery, but follow up outpatient care is needed to avoid returning to dangerous food behaviors, such as restricting or purging. In addition, individual therapy allows a client to deal with the emotional aspects of recovery with one person they trust versus in a group. Many clients start to get into deeper underlying issues when they are not in front of a group. Dealing with issues of self-esteem, shame, or trauma are not easy to do amongst peers.
We hope this helps give you some direction as you start this process. Having a child struggle with an eating disorder can be scary and overwhelming, but it does not have to be when you have the right team to help your child recover and provide you as parents with the education you need. Please visit www.lotustherapygroup.com to learn more about treatment and our team that is available to answer all your questions! We look forward to connecting with you and wish your family all the best as you navigate this process.
