What Level Of Care Do I Need For Eating Disorder Treatment?

Eating disorders are a growing problem in Scotland, Britain, and throughout the EU.

Many are struggling with disordered thinking about their worth as they define it by weight, appearance, and food. Eating disorders are often a way to cope with feeling out of control in other areas of life.

Taking too much obsessive control over eating and weight can have tragic consequences. Eating disorders have high rates of fatalities as the body, mind, and heart shut down due to malnourishment. They can also lead to people experiencing both an eating disorder and an addiction, needing comprehensive dual diagnosis treatment.

Treatment for Eating Disorders

Treating eating disorders can happen at varying levels of treatment, from outpatient to intensive residential. Each person has a unique set of circumstances in their personal life as well as in their eating disorder which will dictate the kind of treatment they need. For eating disorder treatment, there needs to be a focus on restoring health to mind, body, and spirit. Eating disorders clearly affect the physical body, but they live deep within the mind.

Spiritually, eating disorders indicate that a person has lost their connection to themselves and the way that they make meaning in their lives. All of their focus on meaning has been wrapped up in food, weight, appearance, and other measures of superficial concern.

Treatment should result in restored physical health, education about eating disorders, relapse prevention techniques, coping skills, therapeutic recovery from concurrent mental health disorders, and a sense of purpose in living without self-destructive behaviours. Here we will discuss the options for eating disorder treatment and why they would be the best fit.

• Residential Inpatient: This is the highest level of care in which patients will have the most supervision. If your eating disorder has caused an extreme effect on your physical health, being in a residential setting is safest. Regularly served meals, private diet and nutrition, restorative treatments, and long hours of therapeutic healing are necessary to bring the body to a stable place. Residential care is especially important for you if you do not think you can abstain from harmful eating disorder behaviours which would worsen your condition.
• Intensive Outpatient: After a residential program, the intensive outpatient level of care includes less supervision and therapeutic programming, but still offers a full day’s worth of treatment. If your eating disorder behaviours are becoming problematic but have not taken a disruptive role in your life, this level of care would be best for you.
• Lower Levels Of Care: If you are stable in your life and are concerned about a growing problem with eating disorder behaviour, a lower level of care will offer you the therapy you need to confront the underlying causes of your eating disorder while learning practical tools for living without self-destructive behaviours.