Posts Tagged “Services”

Reviewed by Mindy Elliott, MS, Director of Education at The Emily Program.

The fear of slipping behind in school shouldn’t be a barrier to connecting with lifesaving eating disorder care. While this concern is common and valid, your child or patient’s health must come before any outside commitments or responsibilities—including their education. The good news? Prioritizing health does not have to adversely affect academic progress.

At The Emily Program, we are committed to helping our clients stay on track with school while getting the vital eating disorder support they need. The process of navigating your child’s education and treatment may feel like an impossible balancing act, but we are here to help.

If you’ve been wondering whether you have an eating disorder, chances are you’ve also been talking yourself out of the question. It’s not that serious. Other people have it much worse.

Living in a culture that constantly moralizes food and normalizes disordered eating and exercise patterns can make it incredibly difficult to accurately evaluate your own relationship with food, exercise, and your body.

Eating disorders are serious, life-altering mental health conditions that thrive in silence and isolation. However, with specialized support, lasting recovery is entirely possible.

If you think you might have an eating disorder, here are three reasons to reach out now.

What if the help you need for an eating disorder isn’t nearby? And what if the help that is nearby isn’t enough?

Leaving home for treatment can feel like a lot to ask. You may be weighing whether the travel is worth it, whether you could just work with your regular therapist or family doctor, or whether it’s even worth trying again after a program that didn’t really understand eating disorders already let you down.

Eating disorders are complex, multifactorial illnesses, and healing from one takes specialized, multidisciplinary expertise that isn’t available everywhere. That’s worth understanding before you rule anything out—including the option of going a little farther for care that actually fits what you’re facing.

Episode description:

Research suggests that 25 to 50 percent of people with eating disorders have also experienced trauma, and that the two conditions tend to reinforce and worsen each other when they co-occur. Despite this, care is often delivered sequentially—people are asked to address one condition before they can work on the other, even though the two are deeply intertwined.

For many adults, eating has never felt straightforward.

Certain textures or smells might make you tense up before you even take a bite. Maybe you once choked or got sick after eating something unfamiliar, and food hasn’t felt safe since. Or perhaps you rarely feel hungry at all; eating just feels like something you have to get through.

Over time, you’ve found ways to cope: sticking to a short list of safe foods, keeping meals predictable, checking menus ahead of time, or bringing food you know you can tolerate. These strategies help you get through the day, but they can also be exhausting.

The holidays—from Halloween through Thanksgiving and the December celebrations—can be one of the most challenging times for individuals and families navigating eating disorders. While many focus on celebrations, those struggling may face heightened stress around food-centered entertainment, meals, disrupted routines, and social pressures. It’s common to wonder, “Is this really the right time for treatment?”

As someone who struggled with an eating disorder as a teenager and young adult, and as a clinician working with people with eating disorders for three decades now, I find myself thinking, “Yes! Now is the right time”, because often there never is “the right time” given all of life’s conflicting responsibilities.

You know you need help for an eating disorder—or someone you love does—but you can’t figure out if you can afford treatment, and it’s keeping you stuck.

Insurance policies are written in language that’s deliberately hard to decode. You need to know what your plan covers and what you’ll owe, and getting that information is difficult—especially while you’re also dealing with the stress of an eating disorder.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. This blog walks you through what insurance typically covers for eating disorder treatment, how to determine what your plan includes, and the steps to take to get clarity.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, we’re joined by Mindy Elliott, Director of Education at The Emily Program, for a thoughtful conversation about supporting students in eating disorder treatment. With over a decade of experience, Mindy speaks to the concerns that many families face: What happens to school during treatment? Will my child fall behind? She offers both reassurance and practical insight, emphasizing that recovery and academic progress are not mutually exclusive. In fact, with the right support, they can go hand-in-hand.