Walden Behavioral Care Offers Residential Eating Disorders Service

One of First Hospitals in U.S to Complete "Continuum of Care" For Eating Disorders

Walden Place is a residential eating disorder service operated by Walden Behavioral Care at Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham, provides an opportunity to simulate day-to-day living. The program provides recovering residents with a home-like setting where they can practice the coping skills they learn in therapy sessions, while they are in a structured, supervised program.

Residential living, as offered at Walden Place, begins to integrate the patient back into the community. Yet Walden Place is adjacent to Walden's in-patient treatment unit, Alcott Center, if a more intensive level of care is needed.

The residential program at Walden Place offers longer-term treatment for patients who have neither acute medical or psychiatric symptoms, but who need more treatment before they are ready to advance to Walden's partial hospitalization program or return to their home communities.

The focus of treatment at Walden Place is on providing a supportive environment where personal accountability and responsibility are emphasized. Residents learn and practice newly acquired skills by experiencing supervised activities outside of Walden. Living in a setting that simulates life outside of treatment, patients can better identify what triggers their disordered behavior and learn to cope with the challenges they will find most difficult to overcome when they return to life outside of Walden.

Walden Behavioral Care is one of the first hospitals in the country to offer the complete "continuum of care" for eating disorders.

"We can treat all patients with eating disorders, from those in the earliest stages to those with life-threatening symptoms," said president and CEO Stuart Koman, PhD. "Even more important, as our patients advance toward recovery, we can provide the most appropriate level of care at all times."

The residential eating disorder treatment program at Walden Place houses up to twelve patients in a pair of two-bedroom apartments with room for expansion. Walden mental-health counselors oversee residents 24 hours a day.

The residential eating disorder treatment program at Walden Place is licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.