Mental health providers can be as misguided as medical providers, that is clear. Many practitioners in both fields learn about eating disorders during their training and what they have learned as students becomes their Gospel. It does not get challenged again.

New scientific information moves very, very slowly out into the community of practitioners. This seems to be why we see mental health providers touting eating disorder treatments that have not changed much since the 80’s or even earlier. The following is an excerpt from my book Give Food A Chance.

Perhaps because we are a medically oriented clinic we get fewer misguided comments from our mental health colleagues than from our physician colleagues, but when we do, they are major! Following are a few of the unfortunate comments we have heard:

• You can’t have anorexia nervosa because you are not thin enough.
• Everybody purges occasionally.
• Your parents caused this.
• The eating disorder is just an expression of other, nonfood-related struggles, which we need to get to the bottom of.
• Having an eating disorder means you have been sexually abused, whether you can remember it or not.
• Your son’s eating disorder means he is gay.
• You have a sugar allergy/addiction, and that is causing all your eating problems.
• You are “regurgitating your mother”. Find out why.
• Unless you “buy into” your treatment, it can’t help.
• Your parents need to “butt out” of your meal plans and food.