Status of Women committee  Thank you for having me here today. I am a psychotherapist treating anxiety, depression, and eating disorders in Burlington, Ontario. I am also a proud member of the steering committee of the National Initiative for Eating Disorders. I am here representing the voice of my cli

Status of Women committee  The question is, how long after I was diagnosed was I in the hospital?

Status of Women committee  No. I'll clarify that, absolutely. Looking back now, I can see that my eating disorder started when I was probably about 15. Nobody started talking about it until my very late teens, early twenties.

Status of Women committee  I think my family realized it first and pushed me into getting an assessment. Then from there it took years for me to be....

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I was 20 years old, so....

Status of Women committee  Yes, I think in relation to Lisa, I was an adult, so my family was very aware; however, they were helpless because I wasn't ready to make that connection. You've heard from Sheena's Place. There was Danielle's Place at the time, but I was seeing my family doctor weekly until the

Status of Women committee  Yes, I'm a private practitioner now.

Status of Women committee  A lot of my awareness is through the National Initiative for Eating Disorders, NIED. That's really where I want most of the focus to be.To find a private practitioner, we have NEDIC, an information centre based out of Toronto. That has all the eating disorder specialists and is l

Status of Women committee  I use the evidence based, so I am trained in the Maudsley approach. I did my training with Daniel Le Grange in the United States. With adults we're really working with cognitive behavioural therapies; dialectical behavioural therapy is used a lot more now. It's very interesting t

Status of Women committee  First and foremost, eating disorders don't exist in a vacuum, so generally speaking there's always going to be.... It's an anxiety-based illness, so there's anxiety, depression. There's a very high level of comorbidity that is happening. To answer your question in terms of chall

Status of Women committee  I think our treatment here is very black and white. The treatment here for eating disorders hasn't changed in the last 20 years. If you're not able to comply completely, you're not given any chances. There are very strict criteria in terms of how much weight you have to gain. I'm

Status of Women committee  That's a really good question. I know that for myself in particular, I practise out of Burlington and people travel hours and hours to get to me. I don't know how many exactly specialize in this field, to be honest, but I think that in my small city of Burlington, there are only

Status of Women committee  I wish I could say yes. I think the work that we've done through NIED in the last two years has been pretty incredible. One of the biggest doctors in the field, Dr. Woodside, said that he'd seen more change in the last year than in the last 30. That's positive in terms of bringin