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realspongesociety t1_jcp51w9 wrote

There's a wide spectrum of eating disorders and treatment will also depend on the severity (i.e. does it require hospitalisation? Can it be managed through outpatient? Residential?). Insurance will also throw a spanner in the works.

In any case, there's usually a basic treatment dyad made up of your PCP and a therapist, with a dietitian and/or a psychiatrist involved if/as needed.

So, even if you're aiming for a residential programme, your PCP is likely to be the starting point for an initial assessment and a potential referral. I say likely because some PCPs are great, but others can be iffy about diagnosing eating disorders.

Your second stop (assuming, again, we're not talking about someone whose needs are not obviously too great to be managed on an outpatient basis) is to look for a therapist. You want 2 things in a therapist: that they are someone you feel you may come to trust / be able to open up to; and specialisation in eating disorders. Specifically, you're looking for therapists (psychotherapists) who do vanilla CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) with specialisation in eating disorders; or therapists who do DBT (dialectic behavioural therapy) with specialisation in eating disorders.

This is fairly generic guidance, but it should be the way. If you're looking for more specific recommendations, the best I can do is suggest you start searching for DBT with specialisation in eating disorders. DBT is a more methodical approach than your general CBT and my understanding is that, if well implemented, it has better chances of success. I would start by looking through this website and identifying therapists who aren't too far away and then googling them to see areas of specialisation, efc.

Good luck!

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