Learning from the Emily Program: Providing Help for Disordered Eating Patients

What are signs of eating disorders? What causes the disorders, anyway?

Annie Root, an adult Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) program coordinator at the Beachwood, Ohio location of the national Emily Program, visited Northeast Ohio Medical University recently. She was invited to NEOMED by the Center for Student Wellness and Counseling Services to present the first in a series of master skills classes through which students can build their repertoire of clinical skills in their professional and personal lives.

Understanding the disorders

One of the most important things to know: Eating disorders are a biologically based brain illness. They are influenced – not caused – by environmental factors.

So, don’t blame the patient’s parents (or anyone else).

The Emily Program serves patients with a wide variety of eating disorders, from anorexia to binging or avoiding/restrictive food eating disorders.

At the table

The most important first step to take, said Root, is for the health care providers to sit down at a table and eat with the patient.

There was time for questions and answers, such as second-year College of Medicine student AuBree LaForce’s question about what labs are taken for patients and how to establish baseline measurements for individual patients.

Lab values are the gold standard, but the focus definitely needs to be on treating each person holistically and as an individual, said Root.  Growth curves are important for identifying ideal weight range and lab values are needed for tracking medical complications in patients with eating disorders. Body Mass Index (BMI) and family history are taken into consideration when diagnosing a client with an eating disorder, but there are many measures that make up a diagnosis, Root notes.

Early understanding

First-year College of Medicine student Jenna Jwayyed found the session insightful. “As M1s, we generally don’t see patients, so it was nice to see how some of our coursework is applied in the clinical setting,” she said.

“For example, Ms. Root talked about how certain biochemical markers play a role in helping with eating disorder recovery, which was interesting to learn about since we just finished studying metabolism.”