An innovative Toronto program for people facing both eating disorders and substance abuse issues is among four Ontario facilities receiving just-announced grants for eating disorder treatment.
The University Health Network offering — the first of its kind in the province — is receiving a $50,000 grant from WaterStone Foundation, a Toronto-based eating disorder charity.
In total, the foundation is providing nearly $170,000 to provincial facilities offering high-specialized eating disorder treatment programs, including The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket and a collaborative initiative in London.
The Clementine Program provides eating disorder recovery programs for adolescents and teens. It is one of the best treatment programs in the country. Call us to discuss your needs. Applicants must hold a faculty appointment at a nonprofit academic, medical or research institution in the United States, Canada, or Israel. We have always been enthusiastic about attracting researchers with a strong track record in another field who can bring a new approach to eating disorders research. The Eating Disorders Program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital offers various levels of care to support children and adolescents diagnosed with an eating disorder or disordered eating. Experts from Adolescent Medicine and Big Lots Behavioral Health Services at Nationwide Children’s work with the child and family to stabilize eating behavior.
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UHN’s portion of the funding will help set up an integrated intensive treatment option for people coping with potentially-deadly eating disorders alongside drug and alcohol abuse — a common but difficult-to-treat combination.
“We really believe that it would be much more beneficial if we could be offering a much more integrated treatment approach, rather than having it broken up into pieces,” said Dr. Patricia Colton, medical director of the eating disorders program at Toronto General Hospital, which will be working in collaboration with the addiction program at Toronto Western Hospital.
Around 200 people come through TGH’s intensive program every year — either as in-patients or in the day hospital — and more than 30 per cent have both an eating disorder and substance abuse issue, Colton said, adding it’s a “particularly” difficult combination to treat.
Eating disorder and substance abuse treatment is a cause that matters deeply to Kim Duffy, co-founder and board chair of WaterStone.
Her eldest daughter Corinne, now 24, spent nearly a decade battling anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, trying different treatment centres in Ontario and south of the border. “There were addictions as well,” Duffy said. “It becomes a way of numbing out; you don’t want to think about it, so you do something else.”
Corinne just graduated university and is going on to do her master’s in psychology, and is “in a great space right now,” Duffy added. But the experience of watching her daughter’s illness and the lengthy wait times for treatment — it took eight months for her initial assessment in Ontario, Duffy said — inspired her to co-found WaterStone.
Only in its second year, the foundation has so far raised nearly $500,000, which has provided financial aid to people with eating disorders for treatment in private clinics when they couldn’t access the appropriate services through Ontario’s public system.
WaterStone’s June 2 grant announcement comes on the inaugural World Eating Disorders Action Day, a global initiative advocating for early intervention and evidence-based treatment for eating disorders.
“I think it’s fantastic, amazing, extremely generous — and very, very much needed,” said eating disorder awareness advocate Wendy Preskow, founder of the National Initiative for Eating Disorders. “It’s needed as far as access to treatment, and help that hasn’t been available to reach more families, more children, more young adults.”
Colton said TGH is “really grateful” for the grants and stressed the dire nature of eating disorders, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.
“There’s no aspect of this that has anything to do with choice or lifestyle or vanity,” she said. “These are grinding, exhausting, difficult disorders, and people are desperate to try and figure out how to recover.”
Where the grants are going
• To launch a new integrated intensive treatment for people coping with concurrent eating disorders and substance use problems, a joint undertaking of University Health Network delivered by Toronto General Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital ($50,000)
• To provide transitional supportive housing in London for individuals reintegrating into the community while completing or after having undergone treatment for an eating disorder, with services and support provided by CMHA Middlesex working in collaboration with the Eating Disorders Foundation of Canada and the London Health Science Centre Adult Eating Disorder Program ($50,000)
• To double the existing multi-family group therapy program for a one-year cycle at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket ($37,750)
• To provide support to The Hospital for Sick Children to help adolescents with eating disorders, and their families, transition to adult eating disorder services ($30,600)