Status of Women committee  Thanks very much. Good afternoon. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you about this important issue. My name is Joanna Anderson. I'm a clinical social worker specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, and the executive director of Sheena's Place, a non-prof

Status of Women committee  I think this is a way that women experience eating disorders differently from men. For sure, if you are an adult women and you have to go to treatment, as Dr. Woodside said, treatment can last nine months to a year to do it properly. What are you supposed to do with your children

Status of Women committee  Of our clients.

Status of Women committee  No. Those are of our clients at Sheena's Place, not in the general population.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I think that this is a committee that's being commissioned to talk about women and girls. Eating disorders do affect boys as well, but while we're talking about women and girls, it's been understood that this is an illness of affluent, vain girls, and to understand th

Status of Women committee  I'd like to echo what Ms. Martin said. Also, I think one thing that's very important is a national public awareness campaign to help people understand that eating disorders are a severe mental illness that has very high mortality rates, and to understand that this is not just you

Status of Women committee  I think the thing that I find so alarming about this is we at Sheena's Place will go to one school, one coach. Our program manager went to Elizabeth Fry yesterday because they have a woman in prison who is coming out and they don't know how to help her. She has a severe eating di

Status of Women committee  I think that there's not, to answer your question quite frankly. Those of us in the field do our best to collaborate and share knowledge. But conferences are very expensive, conducting research is very expensive. I came to Sheena's Place in 2012 and for the first time we are co

Status of Women committee  Yes, very correctly, thank you.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I believe that would be a very effective strategy for moving forward.

Status of Women committee  Sure. Psychiatrists in Canada are covered by OHIP—if you can find one, and if you can find one to treat eating disorders. I would say that within psychiatry, because this is a long-standing, entrenched illness, a lot of psychiatrists don't want to take eating disorder clients o

Status of Women committee  Sure. I can provide the committee with more numbers. I don't have the numbers exactly off the top of my head, but I can submit them to you. Many of our clients, I would say about 30%, have had this illness for one to two years. Similarly, another 30% have suffered for more than

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. Early screening and access to treatment.... When I worked at SickKids we did a family meeting every month where we would talk to parents and introduce them to our program. The theme month after month was, "We went to the doctor, we told them something was wrong with o

Status of Women committee  Yes. Absolutely. Ms. Martin noted earlier about children's growth curves. The first thing that we would always do when we got a child into the program was look at the way they had been growing normally until they had this intervention of an eating disorder. The idea is to get ki

Status of Women committee  As I said, we know that shorter waiting lists are consistent with a better prognosis. Either you have this illness for one or two years, or you have it for many years. That's what the data tell us, and that's what we see at Sheena's Place. So in terms of recommendations, I would