People with eating difficulties need help at an early stage
Anyone can recover from eating disorders, and today we have very good treatment methods. But it’s very important to get help as early as possible, before it gets stuck and becomes part of your identity.
This is what Ester Marie Stornes Espeset told BA on February 22. The specialist psychologist has worked for many years at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic (BUP) in Haugesund. She is concerned about the development.
– The number of new cases is now back to pre-pandemic levels. However, in Child and Adolecent Psychiatry across the country, there are more people with eating disorders than before the pandemic, and we see that the eating disorders are more serious,” says Espeset.
Reaching young people in the early stages of the disease is difficult for several reasons.
– “There’s a lot of shame associated with struggling with food and the body, and it’s in the nature of eating disorders that it’s a coping strategy for other things. So for many people, the threshold is high for even thinking that they need help,” says Espeset.
Digital treatment on the way
To reach out to young people at an early stage, Espeset is working with research fellow Guri-Elise Holgersen at Helse Bergen on the brand new and unique e-treatment called eBalanse.
– “We have developed a digital treatment platform for young people with eating disorders, and this has been developed in collaboration with young people. This has never been done before,” says Holgersen.
The treatment consists of 10 weeks of digital treatment delivered via a mobile app, in addition to a weekly phone call with a therapist at Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
To evaluate the benefits of this, young people between the ages of 16 and 18 are now being offered participation in a research study. The young people must live in the coverage area of Helse Bergen and Helse Fonna.
– “In the first instance we need around 30 participants. They will participate in a treatment that is not yet available at the marked ,” says Holgersen.
Many people don’t know they have an eating disorder
In the BA interview on February 22, Lisa explains that she was involuntarily hospitalized for a whole year due to an eating disorder. (Norwegian)
During her first year of high school, the eating disorder took more and more control of Lisa’s life. Everything was about food, body and weight. She began to isolate herself from her friends. At the same time, she didn’t realize that she was actually sick.
– I felt absolutely awful. But I didn’t realize that I had an eating disorder. Because I was eating. I wasn’t one of those people who didn’t eat anything.
An eating disorder is a mental illness, not a weight disorder. But when you’re underweight, you can’t think clearly because your brain doesn’t work properly. When I gained more weight, I started to think a little clearer.
That’s when Lisa decided she wanted a life outside the hospital. She was 18 years old at the time and had to learn to take care of herself. She had to learn to eat and find out who she was.
– I had lost myself, my identity was very much tied to having low weight and eating little.
Gradually, she found her way back to herself, while being followed up by the healthcare system. She was then able to go back to high school, she made new friends, and realized that there is more to life than food and exercise.
Today, Lisa is fully recovered, but she feels that she has lost much of her youth.
Good feedback about the digital processing eBalanse
Lisa has reviewed the digital tool against eating disorders that is now being tested on young people.
She particularly likes the fact that the program is designed so that young people have to decide for themselves how they feel today. “It’s really good to organize the chaos in your head and make you aware of your own thoughts and feelings.
– “I think this can be preventive. If it is posted on Ung.no, you will be able to use it without a referral, and there are no waiting lists,” Lisa tells BA.
– In the long term, the goal is to make e-treatment available both as a self-help tool on Ung.no and as a supplement to treatment in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,” says research fellow Guri Holgersen from the UngMeistring project in Forhelse.
Link to the study on digital treatment for adolescents between 16 and 18 years:
Digital treatment for adolescents with eating disorders
Read the interview with Lisa in BA January 22. (in norwegian)