Status of Women committee  Thank you for the honour of presenting to you on behalf of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and on behalf of clinicians who treat eating disorders in youth. As you know, eating disorders are devastating illnesses. Research suggests that it takes between t

Status of Women committee  I should point out that those are older statistics and that they are for young adults or a study in adults. We think things are starting to get better for young people and for pediatric eating disorders because of the recognition of the need to involve families. An exciting dev

Status of Women committee  That's an easy one, but I warn, I can talk a long time about it. I want you to imagine a patient with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, who has the constant thought, “There are germs on my hands,” and the only thing that makes it better is if that patient goes and washes th

Status of Women committee  They do not entail Canadian guidelines.

Status of Women committee  Again, perhaps I can just clarify. There are practice guidelines for the treatment of child and adolescent eating disorders. There are American practice guidelines, which I helped to develop, and we're in the process of trying to make some Canadian guidelines.

Status of Women committee  No, I definitely favour evidenced-based treatment for eating disorders, and we lack a lot of evidence. So at this point, for example, there is no evidence whatsoever that there is any medication to treat children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa. Having said that, as I point

Status of Women committee  It depends on the severity of their illness because I wouldn't want to hospitalize a patient with a mild eating disorder, nor would I want to keep a patient out of hospital who was very severely ill and medically unstable. So it does depend on the level of intervention, and it's

Status of Women committee  The components of care are that you need psychological treatment, medical treatment, and nutritional treatment, and they all need to be combined. For most patients, the recommended treatment is outpatient treatment, where they're followed for their medical issues by a medical doc

Status of Women committee  It would be less than 1%, I would guess, if we looked at the whole country.

Status of Women committee  There's a difference between treatment for girls versus that for women, so for adults, yes, but for young people we recommend family-based therapy.

Status of Women committee  The number one challenge—and again, I'm only talking about pediatric eating disorders—is that she won't seek treatment because she's terrified that it will mean that she'll have to gain weight. So no matter how much she is suffering, she will not choose to go and get help, becaus

Status of Women committee  That's a very difficult one, because I don't have enough research to answer that question. We desperately need more research into the causes of eating disorders. I might have some opinions, but I don't have facts.

Status of Women committee  Wow. There are so many gaps that it's hard to know where to begin. There's a huge lack of research. We don't understand the causes of eating disorders. We don't understand how to prevent eating disorders. We don't know how to disseminate the most effective treatments. We don't kn

Status of Women committee  Yes, in many ways. Would you like me to elaborate?

Status of Women committee  For example, in medical school and residency training, there's a definite lack of training and a lack of understanding of eating disorders. Like Ms. Phoenix said for the NPs, for the doctors there would be a mandatory lecture on the symptoms of anorexia nervosa and that kind of t