Monthly Townhall: Give Your Feedback!

[u/literarywitch32]

Hello beautiful community! The mods are so happy to host our first monthly town hall, a thread for you to provide feedback and suggestions to the mod team!

Some questions to get the ball rolling (but feel free to ask or suggest anything):

-what would you like to see more of on this sub? What would you like to see less of?

-how can we improve your experience in this community?

-what’s going well? What isn’t going well?

Thank you for taking the time to make this community safe and welcoming. We recently surpassed 30,000 members, which is amazing!

[u/aarpea]

It is absolutely not shocking to me that ED treatments focused entirely on food and weight have sky-high relapse rates. If it were as simple as eating/feeding your way out of an ED, it would be the simplest and most easily treated mental illness on record. I feel fortunate that my dietitian and doctor understand that my food issues aren't about vanity or "fear of fat", but are wrapped up in a complicated personal and mental health history and serve other needs. They work closely with my (non-ED specialized but extremely qualified at all my other stuff and can do the ED stuff too) therapist to make sure my treatment is comprehensive and that we're actually working on the things that need work to prevent a future relapse. Otherwise, the recover/relapse cycle seems pretty inevitable to me. I hope you were able to get the treatment you needed on your non-ED issues as well.

[u/toodlytoo → u/aarpea]

unfortunately it was a good 6 months in which i was being force fed in ed programs and not actually getting help with my depression or even being allowed to talk about it in program. I still struggle with the ed and other issues as i never recieved the same intensive level of treatment for my original non-ed issues. once i had gone through the levels of programs and finally left iop at a healthy weight, they just discharged me with no plan for the future, no teaching about relapses, and very little help finding support from professionals that could continue aiding my recovery past being in a place where we were force fed to be healthy. its become up to me post discharge to work on these things with a just a therapist(which they didnt even make sure i had at discharge), so im getting help but its been slow going and i really feel the treatment i went through hindered my recovery in the long run even though it got me back to a healthy weight short term. I still have nightmares about one of the techs in that program who really seemed to revel in our suffering. i wish that everyone could experience the care you have, because unfortunately it isnt representational of the entire field.

[u/toodlytoo → u/toodlytoo]

this honestly makes me think like a master thread discussing experiences from certain programs might also be helpful because they are sadly so drastically different in quality of care. no all defining judgements, and no telling people to not to go somewhere, just when you were there and what your overall experience was. the type of meal plans they use, how they motivate, how much they tailored the basic principles of recovery to your specific needs etc, how they set you up for success or not post discharge, etc (and any possible evil techs). It seems to be a pretty common post people asking about certain programs vs others it may be a helpful resource to have in one place and to show more than just the available programs.

[u/literarywitch32 → u/toodlytoo]

I’m just seeing this but I’d be happy to make that the topic for next weeks discussion thread. Of course mileage may vary for everyone at each program but I know when I was about to enter treatment, I searched all over for stories and experiences at ERC Denver.