Doctors Need to Learn how to Treat Eating Disorder Patients

In this blog, I write much more frequently about the psychological and emotional effects of eating disorders. However, the medical and physical effects of these illnesses are real and often very serious too. Some of these conditions are reversible and some chronic after years of illness.

I have reviewed some of the more common medical problems caused by eating disorders in previous posts and wanted to highlight a different concern about eating disorder recovery, namely, the difficulty finding knowledgeable primary care doctors able to treat these patients.

Doctors are generally not taught about eating disorders and have limited knowledge about the subsequent medical complications. There are no other patients with long-term effects of starvation. Doctors with any limited knowledge about people with anorexia have worked in areas of the world which experience famine or who have worked with people with end stage cancer. However, even these experiences provide limited information to treat anorexia. And doctors have almost no knowledge how to treat the medical effects of binging, purging or laxative abuse.

Doctors instead will often make matters worse by either expressing their own bias or ignorance about eating disorders, by talking about their own fat phobia, by relating false information about weight and health, by praising people who lose weight or by using their authority to expound upon the latest exercise fad.

Many patients actively avoid seeing doctors for fear their eating disorder thoughts will be triggered by the appointment. Instead of receiving needed medical attention, people will risk further consequences of the illness since doctor’s visits can exacerbate the illness.

There are a few doctors who have decided to learn more about eating disorders, but many of them don’t treat adults 30 and over. As the incidence of eating disorder rises and the number of chronic patients age, the need for more medical doctors knowledgeable about eating disorders also increases.

The most effective method to help doctors learn is for treatment teams to find doctors willing to listen and learn about treating these patients. Hopefully, training programs will see that eating disorder patients are an increasing part of medical care and that teaching about how to care for these patients is imperative.