Status of Women committee  Thank you for inviting us today. The Canadian Psychological Association is the national association for psychology in Canada. There are approximately 18,000 psychologists in Canada, making up the largest group of regulated specialized mental health care providers in the country.

Status of Women committee  How effective is it for eating disorders? Cognitive behavioural therapy is the treatment that has the most research behind it. There are other treatments that are variously effective as well, but not as well researched. I would say my reading of the literature is that probably, i

Status of Women committee  I work at the tertiary care centre in the Ottawa Hospital's eating disorders program. I've been there for 17 years. We've seen cuts over that time. We lost an OT a couple of years ago, an advanced-practice nurse, half of a psychologist position. It's like death by a thousand cut

Status of Women committee  We don't have the resources.

Status of Women committee  There should be funded treatment programs for binge-eating disorder. I've run three clinical trials funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation. These are research-funded trials, psychotherapy trials for binge-eating disorder. As

Status of Women committee  About 30%, yes.

Status of Women committee  There's actually a very active group in Canada of eating disorders researchers. The interesting thing about the group is that they're a lot like me, clinicians who are doing research within tertiary care centres. There's a group in Ottawa, our group. There's the group at CHEO. Th

Status of Women committee  Yes. I don't know if that's as true in the U.S or if that is unique to Canada. Do you know?

Status of Women committee  So it's unique, but the good thing about it is that the people doing the research are the ones who are most closely connected to the treatment programs.

Status of Women committee  There's not a whole lot of funding to do research on eating disorders in Canada, period. So it's very difficult if you're a young researcher in an academic setting, trying to start a career, to do research in eating disorders. I'm not sure that I'd even recommend it because it's

Status of Women committee  I don't have the particular numbers, but I know of research that has looked at cultures before Internet and TV was introduced and after Internet and TV was introduced, and the incidence of obesity and eating disorders shot up after the introduction of the media.

Status of Women committee  I think it's funded by the Ministry of Health.

Status of Women committee  Dr. Votta-Bleeker, perhaps you could speak to that.

Status of Women committee  We're a tertiary care centre, so our referrals come from family physicians. By the time the patients get to us, they are already moderately ill in terms of severity. Our program does have an outpatient component to it. We get about 150 to 200 new referrals a year of adults. We tr

Status of Women committee  Yes.