Training for clinicians to treat people with eating disorders is limited, unregulated and often unsupervised. The result is very uneven clinical care and often treatment that can be as harmful as it is beneficial.
Eating disorders are different from all other psychiatric disorders largely because there are frequent and severe medical consequences.
Psychiatrists typically avoid treating these patients and often take a very limited role in care if they do.
Even more problematically, medical doctors in other specialties who track the progress of these patients are also often limited in their knowledge of the complications of eating disorders. Medically, eating disorder patients have very different issues and need care from doctors who understand these illnesses, but those doctors are hard to find.
Due to the limited medical care, other clinicians worry about seeing eating disorder patients, especially the ones who are more ill. In addition, there is no standard training program to help clinicians learn how to treat people with eating disorders.
The result is that finding the right treatment for an eating disorder can be difficult. Some programs—non-profit organizations or residential programs—offer more training than there used to be. Many clinicians learn some strategies and approaches by working for various programs as well.
However, there is no standard method or text to instruct clinicians of all types how to treat these patients. And patients suffer because of it.
Despite the rise in prevalence of these illnesses, the increase in treatment has been driven by financial gains, namely venture capital firms buying and expanding treatment programs. The question is who might standardize treatment for the clinical community so there is a way to determine providers with adequate care for these serious illnesses.
As much as this step is needed, it remains difficult to see how and where the next progress can begin.
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