What if My Attempts to Convince My Child to Accept Treatment Aren't Working?

Despite your best efforts to persuade your child to accept professional attention, it's possible that she'll continue to resist. At this point, you'll want to ask your pediatrician to help you formulate a plan for motivating her to enter therapy. Another option is to seek guidance from a therapist. Bring your partner but not your child to the consult. After helping you devise an individualized strategy aimed at encouraging her to accept treatment, the therapist will then follow up with you regarding her condition and whether she's becoming more willing to see a doctor.

If your treatment-reluctant child is physically weakened or unstable, if she's very depressed, or if her food restriction is extreme, you'll need to get help despite her objections. Even if she is not in medical crisis, you may need to insist that she give therapy a try. Under such circumstances, you should remind yourself that your child's recalcitrance is neither her fault nor yours, but rather part of an illness. Your role in getting her the help she so desperately needs is an admirable step, even though it may feel extremely difficult in the face of her opposition. Although she may not be able to understand your intentions now, you can take solace in knowing that your initiative in getting her help will be pivotal in affording her the opportunity for better health in the long run.

Now that we've addressed the challenges of encouraging your child to accept help, you're likely wondering what professional care for eating disorders is all about, a topic we'll introduce in the next section.

Adolescence is a time of life where young people are encountering many types of changes in their lives. Besides physical maturation, adolescents are also pushing the limits of independence and leaving elementary school for middle school, where increased expectations and responsibilities often results in new stress.

Eating disorders, though possible at any age or stage in life, often begin during adolescence. The physical and mental transition to adulthood can be tumultuous, and while there is a mix of biological and environmental components to eating disorders, adolescents seem to be at a prime time in life for developing disordered eating behaviors.

A study published online in Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA/Archives journal, examines the prevalence of eating disorders from a population-based study, looking at comorbidity with other mental disorders, illnesses and rates of impairment.

The study, led by Sonja A. Swanson, ScM, of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues, gathered data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A), which provided a nationally representative sample of adolescents. The researchers wanted to look at lifetime and past-year prevalence of various eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and subthreshold eating disorders.