Eating Disorders: When Outpatient Treatment Is Not Enough - Eating Disorders and Hospital Treatment

Written by HealthyPlace.com Staff Writer

TREATMENT OBJECTIVES

Our objective is to help each client achieve a clear understanding of her eating disorder, its effect on her life, and what is necessary for her personal recovery. Our goal is to develop and initiate a plan for recovery that will be able to be maintained on discharge. We assist clients to:

• Eliminate starving, stop binge eating, purging, and compulsive eating
• Establish nutritious, healthy eating patterns
• Get into balance nutritionally, biochemically, and metabolically
• Gain insight into disordered thinking
• Gain insight into the underlying causes of the eating disorder behaviors
• Learn appropriate expression of anxiety regarding food and weight issues
• Work toward achieving an "ideal body weight" within an accepted range
• Gain insight into destructive attitudes and behaviors
• Develop a balanced weight maintenance plan involving food and exercise
• Improve body image
• Use journal writing and self-monitoring
• Discover and utilize alternative coping skills other than the eating disorder or any other self-destructive acts
• Work with their significant others in the development of improved understanding and improved communication in order to break patterns that enable the eating disorder to continue
• Alleviate depression and anxiety and improve self-esteem
• Identify and constructively express emotions and receive support in developing coping strategies for living free of destructive behaviors
• Use independent experiences and therapeutic passes in order to create a lifestyle that can be continued on discharge
• Develop relapse prevention techniques