I had only one inpatient at an ED treatment center.....but all too many times in the medical hospital where I ended up with a central line & IV nutrition because I ended up so anemic. Last medical hospital, they didn't have a psych ward, but had a pdoc at the hospital......he claimed that I was in such bad shape that if I left the hospital to go to my mother's funeral, I would end up dying & he would put me on a hold if I chose to leave. My GP was a bit less worried & looked the other way but I still had to go AMA with the promise to go back into the hospital after the funeral to get medically stabalized. They wanted me to go to another ED treatment center, but there wasn't one that would help with the trauma that was really the cause of my horrible weight loss that last time.

The ED treatment center......for me really didn't help because I didn't want it to. I was in a major depressed state after loosing my career & I really didn't care if I lived or not. Sadly, I didn't find their treatment was aimed at the individual person's issues & I felt like I was being thrown into a box they said was the cause & the way all people with anorexia thought. My pdoc had gotten me into the Rader Institute in Washington Hospital is So Calif. I don't remember much about those years of my life.....but I remember the dinners.....everyone was eating around a table....no matter what your ED issues were.....if we didn't eat everything they gave us to eat, they would make you drink the Ensure.....to this day, I can't drink ensure without it making me feel sick. I was in treatment from just before Thanksgiving until just after the 1st of the year (6 weeks almost). They always weigh you without allowing you to see the weight. I know there were many group therapy & art therapy. I was very suicidal when I first went in.....so they had one of the workers with me 24/7 for almost a week. After we got settled in a bit, they would take us out in a van to outside places to shop & to just get out. I don't remember ever eating out. My husband lived more than 100 miles away from where I was, so there wasn't much family visiting.

Part of what triggered my anorexia at that time other than the stress & depression I was going through was the prozac & then the wellbutrin. It knocked my appetite completely away.....but I went with the weight loss when it started & then the laxitives. For me it wasn't so much that I thought I looked heaver than I actually did, but it was the good feeling that came with watching the weight come off on the scales. I know that loosing weight always felt like a good thing (my mom was always trying to loose weight).....so weight loss was a feeling of accoomplishment & that feeling didn't change as the weight got lower. Maybe it was a programmed response in my brain.

I still struggle with not wanting to eat & going awhile without making dinners for myself even more now that I left my husband because I'm lazy about making food for myself.

I really hope that you are mentally at the point where you want the change to work & you want to get through the struggle. In reality, what the inpatient does is force you to change your actions.....to break your habits & hopefully work with therapy to the point where you won't want to return to them when you get through the treatment.

Bottom line is that getting through ED's is always up to us & there is nothing an inpatient treatment center can do to MAKE us better......we can only do that with out own desire.

Wishing you the best with this experience....be open & willing & it will be worthwhile.