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Tips for Choosing an Eating Disorder Treatment Facility

While there is not as much variety in regards to choosing an eating disorder treatment facility as there are drug rehabilitation facilities, choosing a clinic for rehabilitation from an eating disorder is a very important choice. Some drug counselors say it is much harder to recover from an eating disorder than it is to recover from a drug or an alcohol addiction.

This is because humans have to eat to survive; this means that humans can not discontinue their relationship with food. Recovering alcoholics can swear not to drink until they have the addiction under control enough to enjoy a drink now and again without having to have a second one. The situation for people recovering from eating disorders is not so black and white. Residents in an eating disorder treatment facility have to eat every day in moderation in order to survive.

Things to Look for

The important things about an eating disorder treatment facility are that the food is healthy and varied, that there are nurses and doctors on the staff who specialize in eating disorder recovery, and treatment facilities should also have a very large focus on psychotherapy and alternative therapies or activities.

Developing a healthy relationship with food has much more to do with attitudes toward food than it has to do with the food itself; simply having good, healthy food at the treatment facility in and of itself is important, but if the residents are trying to develop a healthy relationship with food, the menu must absolutely be varied and healthy.

Food should not be the only focus, however. The type and amount of activities and therapies that are available to the residents are also very important. After all, eating disorders do not heal themselves, and a very direct, but also a very comprehensive treatment plan is necessary. This plan should involve physical activities, ideally some indoor and some outdoor, perhaps along the lines of walking in the woods and doing yoga indoors. This helps to restore a feeling of harmony with one’s body instead of seeing one’s body as an enemy.

Also, some type of expressive therapy, like art or music therapy is helpful. In addition, an individual psychotherapist should be met with on a regular basis to help each resident establish not only how their eating disorder developed, but how they can go about helping themselves through the healing process. For residents of an eating disorder treatment facility that are well on their way to healthy living, group therapy can be a good final step in the psychotherapy process.

A treatment facility that only focuses on food, only focuses on art or physical therapy or only focuses on psychotherapy can not provide the all-around healing that is needed; only a facility with a variety of the programs listed above can begin to cater to the real needs of those recovering from an eating disorder.