The city is home to Denver Health's ACUTE, considered one of the highest-level eating disorder facilities in the country
After the pandemic began, first-time attendance at the Denver-based Eating Disorder Foundation’s family support groups spiked more a 1,000%, the foundation’s program director said. ACUTE, the Denver Health clinic, saw its patient load jump 32% between 2019 and 2021. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment does not collect data on the prevalence of the diseases here,— roughly 501,000 residents — will develop an eating disorder in their lifetimes.
Dr. Guido Frank, a psychiatry professor and eating disorder researcher at the University of California San Diego, said the control offered by eating disorders is an illusion. It can give patients — who, Frank said, are often high-achievers, perfectionists and athletes — a sense of autonomy. But quickly the disorder can take over and become self-reinforcing.
“Only 6% of folks with eating disorders are underweight,” said Lydia Rhino, the program director for the Eating Disorder Foundation. “If you think about the scope of the folks that is missing and leaving out as not receiving care or not having insurance coverage due to their BMI, we’re neglecting to treat a large majority of folks.”
The two bills would also set up a statewide prevention office to coordinate research, best practices and education. The legislation would also ban the sale of diet pills, which Dr. Bryn Austin, a researcher and professor at Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital, said was a pervasive problem among youth in particular. She compared the regulatory environment overseeing the pills and the industry pumping them out to the “Wild West,” she said.
But there are fewer rules specific to the type of care they provide and disorders they treat, he and others said. “It sounds as though they’re dealing with that are set out to torture individuals with eating disorders or punish them, when that’s actually not the case,” she said.
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