The Eating Disordered Child with a Co-Occurring Mood Disorder

Is your teen at risk to develop an eating disorder?
Here are some facts you need to know:

• About the role of genetics in causation and onset,

• About the benefits of parental involvement in treatment and recovery;

• About the potential for early intervention to prevent and heal eating disorders.

If your child eats in an immoderate, erratic way; skips meals; diets, over-exercises, abuses laxatives or diet pills, restricts food or binges; loses or gains weight precipitously, he or she may be showing signs of an eating disorder. Did you know that eating disorders are fully curable in 80% of cases?

• The origins of eating disorders; Nature and nurture

  • "We did nothing wrong. We are good parents. Why is this happening to our child?" Historically, treatment professionals believed parents were the cause of their child's eating disorder, demanding "parentectomies" to insure recovery. We know now that when an eating disorder has temporarily disabled the child's internal resources and capacity for self-care, there is no greater need for informed parental input, guidance, and emotional bonding to help the child heal.
     

  • Research has confirmed that parents are not responsible for causing their child's eating disorder. Clusters of genes that describe temperament, family addiction, mood and anxiety disorders, eating disorders, etc., account for 70 to 80 percent of disease origin. In adopted children, the genetic base of onset may become particularly salient.
     

  • Brain research shows that through a versatile and quality relationship between parent and child… through parental role modeling, problem-solving, support and limit-setting…interpersonal support and the behavioral and emotional changes that come of it hold the potential to change (ameliorate) genetic propensities. Reading early warning signs gives parents a "leg up" for early intervention, prevention and healing.
     

  • Because 87% of sufferers are under the age of 20 and reside with families, it is up to parents and families to "blow the whistle" on diagnoses that do not show up in doctor's offices. Eating disorders emerge in family bathrooms, kitchens, gyms, and restaurants. Eating disorder recovery happens at home, as well. The child is in the therapist's office 45 minutes a week; parents are with their child 24/7. If not part of the solution, parents and families are part of the problem.
     

• The Parental role in treatment and recovery

  • Informed parents have the potential to become "MVP's" on their child's multi-disciplinary treatment team, (which consists of therapist, medical doctor, nutritionist, psycho-pharmacologist, school personnel, coaches, etc.) Parents need to discover how best to support their recovering child, whose needs change throughout the process of healing and personal development.
     

  • Mood disorders, such as bi-polar disorder type II, sometimes take on the appearance of addictions or ADHD. It is up to parents to find expert treating professionals, and to hold them to the task of accurately diagnosing and medicating their child's co-occurring conditions.
     

  • Be aware that treating professionals typically resist diagnosing ("labeling") adolescents with mood or personality disorders because the defining impulsive or addiction-like symptoms might have their roots in different origins (such as alcoholism, ADHD, etc) or may simply be chaotic manifestations of the eating disorder itself. If it "looks like a duck and quacks like a duck"…. the afflicted individual needs to be medicated appropriately. It is the symptom, not the diagnosis, which needs to be addressed. All too frequently, suicide is the outcome of a bi-polar disorder gone noticed or un-medicated.
     

• Recovery happens

  • And when it does, children proclaim that they "have their life back." Parents proclaim that they "have their child back." Eating disorder recovery is more than a matter of regaining or adjusting body weight. It a process through which children mature, filling in developmental milestones that may have been missed, and learn to cope effectively with life, as well as food.