Eating Disorder
Programming

Eating Disorder Treatment Programming:

Our Eating Disorder Program provides evidence-based supports to guide individuals toward recovery. We have two treatment streams, one for adults, and another for adolescents and young adults living with parents or caregivers.

 

Outpatient Adolescent and Young Adult Program

This program is comprised of evidence-based treatment components that work collectively to facilitate recovery for teens and young adults. This stream incorporates treatment components for parents and caregivers in order to foster a home environment conducive to recovery.

Our Outpatient Adolescent and Young Adult Program incorporates the following treatment components:

Initial Intake Assessment

 

Therapeutic Assessment:

Incoming clients will be connected with an individual therapist who will complete a thorough assessment of presenting concerns. The intake assessment will include both the adolescent/young adult and their primary caregiver(s).

Dietetic Assessment:

Incoming clients will participate in a dietetic assessment if they have not met with a Registered Dietitian in the past 6 months. During this assessment, our dietitian will review current intake and associated concerns, while also determining the client’s personal nutritional needs for recovery.

Treatment Plan:

Upon completion of the therapeutic and dietetic assessment, a treatment plan will be provided to the adolescent/young adult and their primary caregiver(s) based on their presenting concerns and therapeutic goals.

 

Individual Therapy

Individualized eating disorder treatment meets the client at their current motivational stage and guides them toward meeting their therapeutic goals. It helps clients understand the function of their disordered eating, reduce problematic eating behaviours such as restriction, bingeing, and purging, and guides clients toward developing more adaptive coping strategies. An integral part of individual therapy for eating disorders includes the cessation of problematic behaviours, the management of body image concerns, and guidance toward increased body and self-acceptance.

 

Dietetic Support

Dietetic support for those struggling with disordered eating helps clients understand the impact of eating disorders on the mind and body, and supports clients toward gradually improving their relationship with food and their bodies. Fully customized to an individual’s needs, this service incorporates monitoring of eating, personalized meal plans for each stage of recovery, and exposure work for managing food rules and restrictions.

 

Caregiver Support Series

Caregivers are required to participate in our two-part workshop series in order to best support recovery within the home environment. Our two-part workshop series addresses the primary concerns within the home domain that tend to most impact treatment. In these two sessions participants will learn to improve communication and support their loved one’s recovery:

Part 1:
Supporting a Loved One with an Eating Disorder: This workshop introduces emotion-focused family therapy strategies for meal support and symptom mitigation. It supports caregivers in navigating meal times, managing difficult emotions, and encouraging recovery.

Part 2:
Navigating Recovery Through Food and Nutrition: This workshop targets many of the nutritional roadblocks that often impede recovery, including how to speak appropriately about food within the home, challenging myths and unhelpful beliefs about what we eat, and modelling healthy eating as parents and caregivers.

 

Caregiver Support

(offered where needed)

 

Parenting Through Recovery – A Group for Caregivers:

This group provides caregivers with skills and strategies to navigate barriers to recovery that surface within the home and other family settings. Caregivers will be guided through handling mealtimes with confidence and effectiveness, approaching behavioural and emotional outbursts skillfully, setting limits and contingencies, as well as managing their own caregiver burnout. This group is available to participants who have completed our two-part workshop series and who would like additional guidance and support.

 

Individual Caregiver Treatment:

Those caring for and loving individuals with disordered eating are able to participate in their own individual sessions throughout the course of their loved one’s treatment wherever needed.

Clinicians working within our eating disorder program are extensively trained in the treatment of disordered eating through specialized continuing education and hospital training.

 

Adjunct Group Treatments

(offered where needed):

Our Outpatient Adolescent and Adult Eating Disorder Programming offers specialized groups that may be added to a client’s care when needed in order to augment treatment and facilitate recovery.

Available groups include:

 

Motivational Enhancement Therapy for Eating Disorders:

This six-session group will provide clients with an opportunity to gain a better understanding of their eating disorder, to identify tensions or inconsistencies between the way life is going now and how they wish for it to be, and to then make informed choices about how they wish to proceed with their recovery. Based on the principles of Motivational Interviewing, this group is designed to produce quick and meaningful internally motivated change.

 

Body Satisfied:

This six-session group will explore thoughts and behaviours that may keep the client locked into body distress. It will provide practical strategies and a framework for moving away from harsh self-criticism and toward body acceptance and compassion. The content of this group includes principles and techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Self-Compassion, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) Skills Group for Eating Disorders:

This 16-week group teaches the foundational skills of DBT while emphasizing their application to the management of symptoms frequently associated with eating disorders. DBT is an evidence-based treatment for disordered eating. Our DBT Skills Group for Eating Disorders helps individuals better regulate their emotions and develop more adaptive strategies for challenging problematic behaviours like restriction, bingeing, and purging. Participants will learn mindfulness skills to better understand the links between their thoughts, feelings, and actions, and to develop enhanced strategies for coping without engaging in disordered eating behaviours. This group helps participants effectively address the underlying emotion dysregulation present with eating disorders, and teach strategies to facilitate improved boundaries and communication.

 

Snack and Meal Prep Exposure Group:

Food exposures are an essential component to eating disorder recovery. Grounded in a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach, regularly confronting feared or challenging foods contributes to enhanced confidence and intuition with eating, resulting in a more positive relationship with food and one’s body. This group provides a safe space for clients to practice preparing snacks and meals and work through food exposures within a supportive environment wherein the use of coping skills will be honed and reinforced. Meals and snacks will be provided to participants by TPWG with time allotted to process experiences related to confronting fears, overcoming mental barriers to eating, and creating goals for continued exposures throughout the week.

 

Relapse Prevention Workshop:

This 2-part workshop will help clients further their relapse prevention strategies prior to program completion to help protect recovery, strengthen values rooted in mental health and wellness, and plan for life’s challenging moments.

 

Outpatient Adult Eating Disorder Program:

This program is comprised of evidence-based treatment components that work collectively to facilitate recovery in adults. This stream involves flexible programming that can be tailored to the unique needs and treatment stage of participants. Treatment components include:

 

Individual Therapy

Individualized eating disorder treatment meets the client at their current motivational stage and guides them toward meeting their therapeutic goals. It helps clients understand the function of their disordered eating, reduces problematic eating behaviours such as restriction, bingeing, and purging, and guides clients toward developing more adaptive coping strategies. An integral part of individual therapy for eating disorders includes the management of body image concerns and guidance toward increased body and self-acceptance.

 

Dietetic Support

Dietetic support for those struggling with disordered eating helps clients understand the impact of eating disorders on the mind and body, and supports clients toward gradually improving their relationship with food and their bodies. Fully customized to an individual’s needs, this service incorporates monitoring of eating, personalized meal plans for each stage of recovery, and exposure work for managing food rules and restrictions.

 

DBT Skills Group (offered where needed)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment for disordered eating. Our DBT Skills Group helps individuals better regulate their emotions and develop adaptive strategies for challenging problematic behaviours like restriction, bingeing, and purging. This group also addresses the underlying emotion dysregulation present with eating disorders, and guides clients in better understanding and managing their emotional constellation of symptoms.

Clinicians working within our eating disorder program are extensively trained in the treatment of disordered eating through specialized continuing education and hospital training.