Inpatient Care

The First Step Toward Recovery

Inpatient care is the most intensive level of care we provide, but even for patients at this advanced stage, the focus is on a planned, step-by-step process of recovery.

Our first priority is to stabilize the patient. Eating disorders can result in severe medical complications. They can damage a person's brain, liver, kidneys, heart, GI tract, bones, teeth, skin and hair. They can result in osteoporosis, retarded growth, kidney problems and heart disease. Given these life-threatening conditions, it's no wonder that the National Institute of Mental Health found that 15- to 24-year-old females diagnosed with anorexia are 12 times more likely to die than those without anorexia.

Yet even medical stabilization is a gradual process. Immediately providing a patient with anorexia with a normal diet, for example, can result in re-feeding syndrome, which can cause heart failure or other medical problems.

During the stabilization process, vital signs are monitored frequently and 24-hour nursing supervision is provided. Occasionally, intravenous fluid or nasogastric tube feeding is needed to prevent further deterioration of the patient's condition. This type of treatment should be provided only in an acute inpatient setting. Walden Behavioral Care has the only inpatient program in New England that is dedicated to treating eating disorders.

Who is served: The Alcott Center serves patients 13 years or older with advanced anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating disorder or other eating disorders. Inpatient care is for patients who cannot be treated successfully using a lower level of care or who have not responded to treatment at a lower level of care.

Goals:

• Medical and behavioral stabilization
• Acceptance of need to change disordered behaviors
• Introduction to psychotherapy
• Discharge planning

Program Hours: 24-hour supervision is provided; the program day begins at 6:15 a.m. and ends at 11 p.m.

Duration: Medical stabilization is typically achieved in one to two weeks before the patient is ready to advance to a less intensive level of care.

Treatment

Treatment includes case management, medical evaluation and management, nutrition counseling, and individual, family and group therapy. Meals, snacks and, when indicated, bathroom use are supervised. Case managers conduct individual and family therapy, and establish and coordinate care with an outpatient team. Patients earn increasingly more freedom and privileges as they stabilize and move toward recovery.

Intensive inpatient care is appropriate only for individuals who are medically and behaviorally unstable, and cannot be treated successfully in a less intensive level of care.

A Typical Day: