Eating Disorders Are Taking the Lives of Our Young — But We Never Hear About it
Around 2006, my assistant looked up the going rates for treatment for those with anorexia and bulimia in the United States. At that time it cost $30,000 a month for the treatment, though there was no average amount of months that the treatment lasted posted on the websites of these residential treatment centers.
Today, I came across a video that was put out by 3 Canadian mothers who came together to open the first residential treatment center in Canada ever. This is because they had to take money out against the equity in their homes to get their daughters treatment in the United States at the cost of $80,000. Again, I have no idea how long the treatment lasted, but it apparently helped their daughters. The reason that the treatment is so high is because of the 24/7 care that needs to be given to the patients in these centers along with the vast spectrum of professions that are employed by them. So, when I have parents tell me that my negligible rates are too high by comparison, I have to laugh. At this time I am raising my rates to $20,000 for up to a year’s treatment, though to be honest in the 17 years that I have been treating this population with hypnotism and neuro-linguistic programming, my clients have been fine after 6 months of treatment.
The reason that I can offer my services for a lot less is that: 1. I will only work with those who are at a ‘normal’ weight for their height because I am not offering medical/nursing support here which is a hell of a lot more expensive to offer. 2. I do this work over the internet and it is done in such a way as to get the ‘cause’ of the problem — meaning the reason that it developed in the first place, and the ‘purpose’ of the problem — why it is still hanging on treated inside of the first 3–4 long sessions — they take 2.5 to 3 hours each on average. After that, we do the addiction work because this is indeed a form of addiction with the compulsive thoughts leading to impulsive behaviors that are causing the client great harm and which the client is unable to stop on their own. They are separated by a week run for 4 weeks. We then deal with the nutritional aspects and create healthy emotional boundaries. Lastly, we work on the client’s building a compelling future. Because, it is really the compelling future as is age-appropriate for the client that is going to allow them to not only let go of the eating disorder but let it go for good — so this is a very important part of the frame of the work that is done and something that the other treatment centers ignore. They also do not think of eating disorders as the addictions they are for the most part. However, those that do take this approach will put your kid in a 12-Step program where they will learn that theywill never have the ability to overcome these illnesses which is totally FALSE based on my clients going on 17 years of living without a thought about their old eating disorders.
There is another really important thing that as parents of an eating-disordered kid you need to know and that is that the kids compete to be the skinniest one of all. Being the natural perfectionist that they are, this is the way they compete with one another even if it leads to their death — and you need to know that eating disorders are the #1 killer of kids ages 12 to 24 these days. Now, that statistic is rather sad, but the real problem that we have these days is that according to the video that I was watching is that there are now kids as young as 6-yea- olds being seen with eating disorders by medical professionals. So by the time a kid becomes a teen, they have already been battling this progressive illness for up to 5 years.
We need to realize that these illnesses are not something to be played with, or put off receiving treatment or you may be one of the parents like the parents of my older sister who mourned the loss of their 18-year-old daughter for the rest of their days. We have to go back to 1973 when their daughter died, a time when we knew a whole lot less about these illnesses than we do now. I wouldn’t wish this on any parent.
Lastly, I want you to know that I offer these same services to males, who have even less of a chance of finding a treatment provider because even the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual only defines anorexia and bulimia as illnesses in females. Somehow they have discounted the 10 million males with anorexia or bulimia in the US each year. Go figure…
If you have a kid who is at a healthy weight who is dealing with the intrusive thoughts of self-loathing and all the thoughts of self-harm followed by the compulsive behaviors then by all means drop me a message and let me know what is going on with your kid — male or female. For the males the illness is a bit different because they have ‘muscle dysmorphia’, meaning that they will work out compulsively to build great-looking male muscles only to never be able to see them in the mirror as you can — that is the dysmorphia that they live with. It can be very lonely with the double shame of having the illness and having it only be accepted in females. More scary is that 1 in 3 the men will indeed die of this illness — sometimes killing themselves to get out of the pain, whereas the statistic for females is 1 in 5 or 20%
However, it is my purpose to offer help to these young men so they too can have the incredible lives they deserve to have no longer having their minds ravaging their bodies. Here is the URL for the video where I found out the cost these parents paid to get their kids help, never mind having to travel out of their own country to access it: ‘Dying to Be Thin’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwhyB8mR-U8
