lack of eating disorder treatment providers
as a barrier to healing
the mental health field as a whole
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 577,000 mental health professionals practicing in the U.S. today whose main focus is the treatment (and/or diagnosis) of a mental health or substance abuse concern.
Clinical and counseling psychologists – 166,000
Mental health and substance abuse social workers – 112,040
Mental health counselors – 139,820
Substance abuse counselors – 91,040
Psychiatrists – 25,250
Marriage and family therapists – 42,880
the eating disorder field
According to www.FindEDHelp.com, the nation’s leading eating disorder provider directory, there are 1,589 OP clinicians (including therapy, dietetics, psychiatry, and medical) specializing in eating disorder treatment in the U.S. Assuming that not everyone is registered with this site, Project HEAL generously estimates that there are a maximum of 3,000 therapists treating eating disorders in the U.S.
That’s one therapist for every 10,000 people who’ve been diagnosed with an eating disorder.
According to the FEDUP Collective, an organization focused on eating disorders in Transgender, Intersex, and Gender Diverse people, that has done extensive research on the eating disorder field for its advocacy efforts, there are 228 eating disorder treatment centers in the U.S. With an average census of 25 people per program, there are around 6,000 available treatment spots in the U.S. That’s one spot for every 5,000 people who have been diagnosed with an eating disorder.
The eating disorder field is also dangerously small. If 30 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with an eating disorder, but there are only 9,000 treatment options, it is no wonder that only 10% of people with eating disorders ever receive treatment. Add into the equation how expensive treatment is, how often it is not covered by insurance, how clustered these treatment options are in large metropolitan areas, and how many of them are strictly limited to treating women and girls who are considered “medically unstable,” it is apparent that the eating disorder treatment landscape was not designed to help the entire population of eating disorder sufferers - but rather, just a small portion of it.
we need more bipoc eating disorder providers.
The most comprehensive list of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous & People of Color) and LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, etc) eating disorder providers has also been aggregated by FEDUP Collective. It lists just 57 BIPOC and LGBTQ+ providers. Assuming that this list is not comprehensive, Project HEAL generously estimates that there are a maximum of 150 BIPOC or LGBTQ+ eating disorder providers in the U.S. That’s around 5% of the eating disorder provider field.
For an illness that does not discriminate and affects people across all identities and demographics, the eating disorder field is extremely homogeneous, being primarily composed of providers who themselves fit the eating disorder stereotype: cis, white women.
eating disorder training is scarce.
Both the diminutive volume of eating disorder providers and the uniformity of their identities can largely be attributed to a broken education system. Eating disorder treatment training is not offered in most Masters level therapy or dietetic programs, nor is it included in Doctoral level medical residencies. Most of these clinical programs include eating disorders as a single hour or day in their curriculum and do not go beyond the diagnostic criteria, often focusing in-class case studies on clinical presentations that reflect the eating disorder stereotype.
This means that anyone interested in treating eating disorders must pursue this education independently. Naturally, the majority of people who have followed this path have been people whose lives have been directly impacted by eating disorders, whether afflicting them personally or someone they know. Given the longstanding eating disorder stereotype, and the narrow population of people for whom the eating disorder treatment landscape was designed, those people have tended to be included in that identity pool - cisgender white women. Not only is this demonstrated in the demographics of the field, but it is strikingly visible at eating disorder conferences and in treatment center staff photos.