Helping Child Overcome Eating Disorder

This book, written by the experts at the Yale University Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, offers you concrete strategies you can use at home to facilitate and support your child's recovery from an eating disorder.

Between 5 and 10 million people between the ages of twelve and twenty suffer from either anorexia or bulimia. This comprehensive workbook offers help to you and your family when one of your of children is struggling with an eating disorder. The book is also a powerful tool for professionals who work with adolescents and teenagers suffering from these disorders.

Helping Your Child Overcome an Eating Disorder is comprehensive, practical, and filled with scientifically based strategies for parents of children with bulimia or anorexia, written by the directors of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. Puberty and adolescence are difficult enough; adding an eating disorder makes it doubly difficult for the parent who may already feel overwhelmed. This guide shows parents how to talk with their children about this touchy subject, access the latest cognitive-behavioral techniques, deal with eating and exercise in the home, find a good therapist, and take charge of ensuring a child s recovery. The book explores issues like depression and anxiety and includes questionnaires, checklists for ongoing evaluation, and charts for monitoring and developing positive eating patterns. Each chapter includes case studies and a Creating Solutions section.

Publishers Weekly

This thorough "introductory resource" for parents of children with eating disorders comes from therapists and researchers at the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, and its frank language, efficient summary of assorted studies, multiple anecdotes and straightforward worksheets will help them both understand their children's issues and create an environment conducive to recovery. In well-organized chapters, the authors present warning signs of eating disorders, offer guidance in understanding their roots, summarize different theories on why they develop and give tips on everything from choosing a therapist (or a particular type of therapy) to shopping for groceries. Communication is key, they maintain, and though parents may not find the "Topics for Family Discussions" easy to broach (dinner table talk with a teenager can be awkward enough, even when one doesn't need to discuss why "our society value[s] physical appearance and thinness so much"), such topics will open lines of dialogue and help parents stop assigning blame on either their kids or themselves. For parents who feel powerless in the face of their child's eating issues, this reassuring guide will show them how to play an active role in helping their child recover healthy eating habits. (Jan. 31) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Bethany Teachman, PhD, is professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. She received her PhD from Yale University. Her research focuses on cognitive processing that contributes to psychopathology.

Marlene B. Schwartz, PhD, is codirector of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. She is also associate research scientist and lecturer in the Psychology Department at Yale University, where she teaches graduate courses and supervises student research and clinical training. She received her PhD from Yale University. Her current research focuses on the role of society and family in the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity.

Bonnie Gordic is a research assistant at the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders and the Yale Center for Child Development and Social Policy. She received her BA in psychology from Yale University. Her research interests focus on the families of children with eating disorders and on early childhood intervention and social policy.

Brenda Coyle, PhD, is clinical director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. She received her PhD from Boston College and completed post doctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School and Yale University. Her primary clinical interests involve the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. In addition to teaching graduate students and directing the clinical services at Yale, Coyle is also a licensed psychologist in private practice specializing in women’s health.

Kelly D. Brownell, PhD, is professor of psychology, epidemiology, and public health, director of graduate studies, and director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders at Yale University. He has served as president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, and the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association.