Respecting People with Eating Disorders

The role of mental health treatment in the world of people with eating disorders is complex. For those who clearly are seeking wellness and recovery, traditional therapy is the best alternative. Mental health practitioners act as a source of support and treatment to help that person create a path out of the eating disorder.

What about the people not looking for recovery who still want support? Even more critically, what about the people completely outside the treatment world not interested in the professional help available?

The standard approach for many clinicians is to label these people as either in denial or intractable. The implication is that they cannot be helped and need to find their own motivation first. It’s even acceptable for clinicians to end treatment because the person supposedly isn’t ready.

This categorical approach to the idea of treatment seems very punitive to me. Why should people be rejected, judged or criticized for doing their best with a very difficult illness? Shouldn’t their plight elicit compassion and not judgment?

Another complaint patients often have is that clinicians feel entitled to tell patients how well they ought to be. Although recovery is an option for people sick with eating disorders, and for many the goal, clinicians have to accept that many people remain in their eating disorder and need someone to meet them where they are. That’s not easy for clinicians to do, but it establishes necessary respect if therapy can have any benefit.

The increased power of residential treatment companies also encourage the mindset that wellness is the only option and that residential treatment is the only path. It threatens to limit to full scope of treatment options and label everyone else as unmotivated.

Clinicians who treat people with eating disorders need to be cognizant of the limitations of eating disorder treatments and to be open to all forms of treatment and life paths. Flexibility, humility and openmindedness make the best clinicians to help people struggling with eating disorders.