Dr. Leanne Isserlin, Medical Co-Director – Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders Program
By: Stefanie Velichkin, Communications Coordinator, CHEO
With demand for mental health services increasing, the new program is already welcoming 12 to 15 new patients with moderate to severe eating disorders daily, seven days a week, for 12 hours. The difference with this new program is the ability for patients to go home to their families at the end of each day, adding 1,460 additional treatment days per year and improving capacity to treat an additional 220 children and youth yearly.
“CHEO's partial hospitalization program has all the elements of an inpatient program except the patient sleeps at home at night," says Dr. Leanne Isserlin, Medical Co-Director – Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders Program. “It maximizes the efficiency and flow to serve more patients and works to improve individual outcomes and keep kids connected to their homes, schools, families and communities, which is essential for their resiliency."
CHEO's eating disorder programs needed to evolve to meet the growing needs of the community. Prior to the implementation of the partial hospitalization program, the day treatment program operated Monday to Friday with a maximum capacity of eight patients. At 170 per cent over capacity, the clinical team, in collaboration with the hospital administration, decided to develop the program, levering funding to further extend care required in the region.
According to Dr. Isserlin, early intervention is a key factor of this new program as families do not need to wait for severe symptoms before seeking clinical help. “The sooner intervention takes place, the quicker recovery can happen and the less likely that kids will relapse and need a long treatment period," adds Dr. Isserlin.
And the investment in this program is already proving valuable to families. Kristina, a young patient dealing with symptoms of eating disorder (weight loss, mood changes, hair loss and lack of stamina – all abnormal things for an athletic teenager) was admitted to CHEO in January with an anorexia diagnosis.
“Without this program, my daughter would not have gotten the help she required," says Kristina's mother, Dawn. “I looked everywhere for help and called a lot of places. Finally, someone we knew contacted us and said they have a child with an eating disorder who stayed at CHEO, so I contacted them and had the doctor in Emergency give me a referral."
For Dawn, worrying about her daughter's well-being will never go away. But their family walks away knowing that they have made a lot of progress and have been given ample coping mechanisms to deal with Kristina's eating disorder.
“Kristina has come a long way and has given up so much to get to this point where she is starting to look and feel good about herself. It is still a roller coaster ride of emotions, and it takes a lot of strength every day to keep eating, but she does it."
The new Eating Disorder Partial Hospitalization Program, along with the day treatment program, now allows patients and families to be discharged from the hospital sooner, meaning a lot more people, like Kristina, can receive treatment.