Eating Disorders: Treatment, Procedure, Cost and Side Effects

What is the treatment?

How is the treatment done?

Eating disorders are mental disorders that cause persistent abnormal eating habits that have a great adverse impact on the physical and mental health of a person. Eating disorders make people focus on their body shape, weight, and their food, developing extremely unhealthy and downright dangerous eating behaviors. The most well known among eating disorders are Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and Binge Eating disorder.

Anorexia Nervosa is the condition where a person suffers from a fear of gaining weight and severely restricts food intake, causing a very low body weight. The patient considers themselves to be overweight even when they would be extremely underweight and continue to limit food intake trying to become thinner. Bulimia Nervosa is another disorder where the patient goes through cycles of sudden overeating followed by attempts to compensate including forced vomiting, excessive exercise, intake of laxatives, etc. Overeating and purging cycles cause embarrassment, feelings of guilt and shame, and is repeated secretly to avoid the shame. Anorexic people may also indulge in the purging behavior, but differs from bulimia in the fact that anorexic patients are always severely underweight, while bulimic patients fall in the normal to overweight category. Patients suffering from the binge eating disorder go through cycles of overeating regularly, but do not indulge in purging behavior.

Treatment for eating disorders mostly focus on psychotherapy to bring patients out of the mindset causing the disorder. This is often combined with medical care and nutritional therapy.

Who is eligible for the treatment? (When is the treatment done?)

Treatments for eating disorders often require a combination of treatments. Medications may be prescribed to deal with any underlying physical disease that causes the eating disorder. Sometimes a mental disease like anxiety or depression is the cause of an eating disorder, and these may be treated with medications to treat the eating disorder. Treatments are also combined with nutritional guidelines tailored to individual patients to help them cope with the nutritional imbalance caused due to the disorder and to restore them to their normal BMI.

The most important mode of treatment for eating disorder is psychotherapy. Since eating disorder is a mental disorder, psychotherapy shows the best results in treating it as it can address all the underlying causes for the disorder to have developed and help the patient deal with them better. Psychotherapeutic options may include behavior therapy targeted at the diseased individual, group therapy among a group of people affected by similar condition, or family therapy where the friends, family, and loved ones of the patient are involved. Psychotherapeutic treatment may be applied in combination with one or more of medications and nutritional therapy. Depending on the severity of the disorder and its outcomes, hospitalization may also be advised.

Who is not eligible for the treatment?

Eating disorders manifest as persisting abnormal eating habits. Anybody who is very seriously underweight and yet regularly insists on eating far lesser than necessary is eligible for treatment. People who are very anxious about their weight and body shape often develop eating disorders and need to be treated. People who regularly get urgent craving for food at random times during the day and eat massive amounts compulsively need to be treated for eating disorders. Also people who regularly eat inedible items like dirt, talcum powder, toothpastes, etc. need to be treated for eating disorders.

Are there any side effects?

Everybody can feel sudden cravings for food or may be unsatisfied with their body image. But in a number of cases these concerns do not persist and do not affect eating behavior. In these cases the people affected do not need to be treated.

What are the post-treatment guidelines?

How long does it take to recover?

Treatments for eating disorders need to be followed up with a nutritional chart designed and tailored to recover normal BMI for patients. A psychoanalytic checkup may be advised after some time after the treatment concludes to rule out any chances of relapse.

What is the price of the treatment in India?

Like other psychoanalytic treatments, treatments for eating disorders are long term treatments. The recovery period is as long as the duration of the treatment, which is stopped after the problem is resolved.

Are the results of the treatment permanent?

Cost of treatments for eating disorders can range between Rs. 500 and Rs. 10,000. There is no real upper limit pertaining to the treatment as psychotherapy can extend for as long as needed.

What are the alternatives to the treatment?

The treatment results are usually permanent as long as the triggers causing the disorder do not reappear, or other triggers do not come into play.