I featured this blog post in my weekly newspaper “Anorexia Suffering and Recovery” http://paper.li/AnorexiaExposed/1319983956

Also, I referred an Eating Disorder sufferer to you for a referral in her area. She is quite ill, been in and out of therapy for years and years, but the kicker is that her husband thinks she is making a conscious decision to not eat. I fear she will die if she does not get help. I hope you are able to send her to a respectable professional or center. I wouldn’t know who in the world to send her to, even though my daughter was in and out of Inpatient Outpatient, Individual Therapists, nutritionists, none of which I would recommend to a monkey (I like monkeys). Keep up the great word you are doing and give us all the information you can. Thank you!!!! Karen Barber http://AnorexiaTreatmentExposed.com

I’ve been sharing this with the parents I serve. Thank you Dr. Sarah Ravin. Parents are always asking for help in finding quality providers. This is a great resource.
Becky Henry
Hope Network, LLC

I saw a video from Dr. Treasure about weight-restoration a while back, and it really blew my mind. So anything she publishes, I’m totally open to reading. Seriously, I am so grateful for this new scientific research and the professionals and advocates who are disseminating the information!!

re: extralongtail – ooh, I discovered her about 2 weeks ago and i was very impressed – forgot to mention her, as I’ve not been reading her for as long as the others. But what stood out to me about her story is that she felt like she never really fit the criteria that books and practitioners hail as hallmarks of AN. I always felt that way, myself, but I played along, because they’re the professionals, right?

Now that I’m living in Europe, I find that practitioners are a lot more understanding about my ‘atypical’ traits and such. Maybe they’re more open to that sort of thing, anyway, given that I come from another continent, from another cultural and ethnic background than they’re used to interacting with. But I feel like they’ve been more openminded in general, not pigeonholing me or other patients into the same old stereotypes.

I do give credit to the facilities and practitioners here that I’ve been exposed to – the first order of business is weight restoration/stabilisation. Even though I didn’t mesh well with the first facility I tried here, they did have some good points. Like, the first week, they’re all about taking in nutrition, a very significant amount of calories (after the first 2 days), and patients don’t start therapy until a minimum of a week after admission, if not later, if a patient is super emaciated. Resting is also emphasised.

The idea is to get physical healing on the ball, the mindset being that a starved brain isn’t going to be really able to participate fully in the therapeutic experience right off, anyway. (Well, actually, after the first week, patients can participate in an art group, but it’s not art therapy, with a discussion of the creative works – just a creative outlet. Once again, the work of therapy doesn’t come until patients are at a certain point physically.)

I am so grateful that I’ve seen next to none of the red flags on the list here in my experience (well, some at the last IP facility, which is why I high-tailed out of there, but they had their good points as well). So I’m really optimistic about my next experience.

Same about the blogs thing. Can I suggest you add Extralongtail to your list. Her “fluffy bunnies” blog is just fantastic.

Andrew

Thank you for the explanation. It makes much more sense now.

Dr Ravin

You rock – you know that but you need reminding.

Here in the UK, we are unable to choose our treatment providers. This is one of the downsides of the wonderful NHS. However, this does not mean we cannot go about educating them whilst our children and loved ones are being cared for.

I had a long conversation with Janet Treasure the other day in which I accused her (very politely!) of emphasising too much about the feelings and not talking about the food. Her reply was that she dealt with older patients and that weight restoration was a given. Many of her patients have been in and out of treatment for years, even decades and have been told ad infinitum that weight restoration is the cornerstone of successful treatment. What she hadn’t realised is that this was not a given in other treatment facilities and she has set about re-emphasising the whole weight restoration issue, in the hope that it will trickle down through our system.

I am hoping that Dr Ravin’s red flag list will become a useful tool for grizzled old campaigners like me to take to our NHS funded treatment facilities and explain to them where, why and how they need to change.

Thank you.

I’m about to start inpatient treatment in a couple of weeks, in a different setting to all of my previous treatments. I really hope I can get help on the road towards remission from my ED, I really do.

What I appreciate, though, is that I have loving friends and family who aren’t expecting a miracle cure. They know that IP is just a jump start to help me start the process of nourishing myself regularly and sleeping regularly and putting a dent in correcting some of the physical and physiological deficits. And, yes, getting a start on therapy alongside it.

But they also know that I’m going to need support when I return home, and I know that they’re committed to giving it. I’m really lucky. At other points in my life, I didn’t have support from friends and family and between that, and a treatment protocol that wasn’t well-tailored to me, relapse was almost immediate.

I absolutely love reading blog posts from Dr. Ravin, from Dr. O’Toole at Kartini Clinic, from Carrie Arnold of edbites.com, and Laura Lyster-Mensch of laurassoapbox.net . These 4 blogs are required reading for me every day. I keep the tabs open and hit refresh, hoping that at least one of them has a new post. The new research and ideas they’ve opened my eyes to has given me SO MUCH HOPE, more than I’ve ever had before. This year was the first time in 12 years that I really thought I had any shot of finding anything resembling a remission or recovery.

More than that, with the new research, I’ve been able to stop blaming myself and focus my energy on what matters – getting me healthy.

Thanks, Dr. Ravin, for everything you’ve posted. My one comment above was the only comment I’ve ever made on your blog, but I’m a faithful reader. I’ve read your entries and cried and shouted, “Yes!” at the computer, because I was happy, so happy, to finally find a practitioner who UNDERSTANDS and can back up her treatment approach with cold, hard science and research studies and fact, and not a rehash of the same old theories that never rang true for me.

Andrew