The Political and Social Biases of Eating Disorder Treatment, Part II

The shift in eating disorder treatment needs to take into account the historical patriarchy of psychiatry. From the earliest days of the psychoanalytic theory, women’s emotions and experiences were marginalized. This trend remains central to the recent history of eating disorder treatment.

The spike in the incidence of eating disorders during the 80’s triggered a response by a handful of psychiatrists to begin hospital-based programs led almost exclusively by men. These revered psychiatrists were known to have created mini-cults of vulnerable, sick women who had nowhere else to turn for treatment.

Largely in response to these treatment models, several women who had recovered from eating disorders themselves began residential programs outside the hospital systems using a new model based largely on addiction treatment.

These strong, outspoken women created a concept for treatment aimed at full recovery, largely taken from their own experiences, rather than the previous approach of maintenance of chronic illness. The programs were for women and run almost exclusively by women. The program philosophy was organized around empowering women to accept themselves and accept the support and love needed to live a full life. Embedded in the idea of recovery was freedom from the tyranny of thinness and beauty society has burdened on women in recent decades.

The downfall of these programs was their success. Seen as potential moneymakers, financial firms run by men bought these programs and have spawned a multitude of new ones throughout country with the aim of making a large profit for their investment. There is still a hint of the old treatment philosophy, but the individualized approach offering true help has morphed into a corporate strategy with much more limited compassion for the people they treat. The ultimate aim is to build a company and sell it at a profit.

As a man in the field, I am hard pressed to insert myself into this dynamic. The current treatment options are no longer aimed at curing the societal ills that essentially create eating disorders. Instead corporate greed has infiltrated the ranks.

The true way to fight these illnesses is to promote a new way for girls to see their bodies through their own eyes, not through the eyes of boys and men. The leaders of the residential programs when they first began were creating a path to teach girls these critical points.

If the health teachers across this country are saddled with this teaching point, there is no way to insert a new message into the heads of the next generation of girls about to suffer from anorexia, bulimia or binge eating.

Educating adults with eating disorders will help recovery but won’t stem this set of psychiatric illnesses aimed to silence women’s voices, emotions and anger. The future needs to cut off the message at its head. When girls are inculcated in this false belief about who they are, the incidence of eating disorders and the cynical corporate machine that profits from it will only continue to grow.