Inclusivity in Eating Disorder Treatment

Eating disorder treatment began in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s as an affliction only for girls and women. Some of the original causes for these illnesses related to pressures on women and body shape, and these issues exist to this day.

However, the idealization of thinness has expanded past just girls and women to include everyone else. Medical, aesthetic or personal issues around body shape all are the root of many eating disorders. Moreover, the media and social media coverage for eating disorders creates an environment ripe for breeding these illnesses.

Treatment has been slow to adapt to the changing population who have eating disorders. Many treatment programs only accept women with just a few starting to treat others as well. Much of the rhetoric around eating disorder treatment, body image thoughts and meal plans are geared to women and need updating to include the entire population with these illnesses.

Inclusivity needs to broaden to all people suffering with eating disorders: women, men and non-binary people, all of whom need specific attention to their own individual eating disorder and recovery process. As clinicians, we need to consider a much broader sense of recovery and open the door to all people suffering rather than exclude people who don’t fit our own assumptions about what people with eating disorders look like.

Many of the fundamental issues remain the same. Setting a meal plan and following it remain difficult initial steps. Body image is a very challenging and often long lasting part of recovery. Inclusivity of all people with eating disorders will broaden the understanding of recovery while also giving hope to everyone that they can get better.

Older eating disorder treatment were built from feminist theories and originated at a time when eating disorders grew from an unspoken cultural message to disempower women. Although this pressure is still very present, eating disorders are now an epidemic that affects all sorts of people for other reasons as well. Individual providers and treatment programs can include all people by recognizing the current population and alter treatment for everyone’s needs.