And Eating Disorder Awareness Week was born.

This year marks the Silver Anniversary (25 years) of Eating Disorders Awareness Week.  Advocates for ED recovery and awareness across the country will make their voices heard through various mediums.  Common activities include candle light vigils, body image workshops, presentations by survivors and by treatment teams, and much more.  This year the Inner Door Center® will be participating in several events during Eating Disorder Awareness Week and beyond to promote ED awareness.  We hope that our supporters will be able to attend some of the events that we have planned or that we will be participating in.

Eating Disorder Awareness/Advocacy Events Inner Door Center® is participating in this year:

• Wednesday, February 29^th, 2012 from 7-9pm – Samara Johnson, Development Director of the Inner Door Foundation will be speaking about the making of the upcoming Detroit art-based Eating Disorder fundraising outreach/awareness event at the “Everybody Knows Somebody” presentation at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak in the Administration Building Auditorium.

• Thursday, March 1^st, 2012 at 7pm – Megan Smith, RD will be speaking to students at Central Michigan University about the unique programs offered for eating disorders at Inner Door Center® and sharing case studies.

•  Thursday, June 14^th, 2012 – “Stereotype Event”, created by Samara Johnson at Inner Door Center®.  Money raised from the event will be used:

• To provide a far-reaching educational network for those who struggle with Eating Disorders along with their friends and family.
• To assist with current national political advocacy efforts to include the diagnosis of eating disorders, across the spectrum, in all mental health parity legislation, and to increase advocacy efforts for mental health parity legislation specifically in Michigan.
• To provide a clinic to assist those who are denied insurance benefits when it is medically necessary that they receive treatment.

 “Teaching is a life-altering experience.  It’s humbling, profoundly challenging and ultimately the most rewarding experience I’ve ever known.  Becoming a teacher is a journey; it’s a journey into one’s self.  Ultimately it’s a journey to what the ancients call the Atman, the Oversoul, the Higher Self.  It’s also a journey with a beginning but one without end:  teachers are forever students.” – Nancy McCaochan, MA, E-RYT.

At the Inner Door Center®, we offer two types of training for yoga teachers – we offer Enlightenment Teacher Training, and we offer Yoga Therapy Training.  You can learn more about these programs by visiting our Facebook page (link here).

So what exactly is the difference between a yoga teacher and a yoga therapist?  Aren’t they kind of the same?

Becoming a yoga teacher and becoming a yoga therapist is not the same thing.  You must become a yoga teacher first before you can move on to yoga therapy.  When training to become a yoga teacher, you learn the history of yoga, different teaching techniques, how to use your voice to soothe and cue your students, the different asanas and the benefits that they provide to the body, meditation techniques, etc.  Your objective is to be able to take what you know about the practice of yoga and lead a group of students to through your classes.

Typically yoga teachers teach group classes at studios and gyms, although some do teach individuals privately.  Typically yoga therapists work with clients individually, but they also facilitate group therapy, as we do here at Inner Door Center® for eating disorder and substance abuse recovery.

Yoga therapy focuses on one specific area and how yoga can help with that area.  For example, at Inner Door Center® our Reconnect with Food® Yoga Therapy program focuses on using yoga to help clients with eating disorders and other co-occurring psychological conditions (anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse and related addictions).  The requirement to enroll in our yoga therapy training is that you have at least a 200 RYT certification and are a licensed professional working in the field of eating disorders.  We do admit peer coaches to our program, but various stipulations apply.

When training to become a yoga therapist, it is important that you are focused inward and are able to heal yourself first.  We cannot help anyone or heal anyone unless we have experienced these ourselves.  That’s not to say that you must have struggled with an eating disorder in order to provide yoga therapy to those who suffer from an eating disorder; it just means that you must learn how to heal yourself, whatever needs to be healed, before you can help heal others.  Once you are able to use yoga therapy to help yourself, to make a personal transformation, they you will be able to share this experience with others to help them make their personal transformation.

We hope that this article has helped to clear up the difference between a yoga therapist and a yoga teacher, and how the training differs for each one.  If you want to learn more about the different training courses offered at Inner Door Center®, please visit our Facebook page or the Inner Door Center® website.

What is an Occupational Therapist?:  Occupational Therapists work in functional goals either in a rehabilitation setting such as a hand clinic, outpatient or general rehab. To assist in establishing life goals either physically or emotionally.

Where did you go to school to become an Occupational Therapist?:  I attended Eastern Michigan University [for OT] and am currently in the Master Program for Social Work at Wayne State University.

What do you hope to do with your OT degree combined with a MSW?:  I would like to combine my skills as an Occupational Therapist specializing in Sensory Integration  with those of Social Work and apply these techniques to addictive behaviors.  I am interested in addictive behaviors and find it to be a very challenging and fascination area.

A few interesting facts about Sally: I played in a jazz orchestra in college and we played many places across the country. I have run in a few marathons  and I have read the Lord of The Rings Trilogy 3 times.

Go Red For Women encourages awareness of the issue of women and heart disease, and also action to save more lives. The movement harnesses the energy, passion and power women have to band together and collectively wipe out heart disease. It challenges them to know their risk for heart disease and take action to reduce their personal risk. It also gives them the tools they need to lead a heart healthy life.

Some of the wonderful women of Inner Door Center® showed their support in the fight against women’s heart disease by wearing red today!  Check us out!

Melissa, Tawana, Jackie and Megan are all showing their support of women's heart health by wearing red today!

Here are some great ways to take care of your heart:

• If you smoke, quit!  And stay away from secondhand smoke.
• Drink in moderation. (If you don’t drink, don’t start.)
• Exercise 150-300 minutes per week.
• Take time out to de-stress – meditate, practice yoga, write in a journal, take a nap, listen to music, etc.
• Choose heart healthy foods – fruits and veggies, fiber-rich whole grains, lean meats & poultry, fat-free or low-fat dairy products, and broiled, baked, grilled, steamed or poached foods versus fried fhttp://www.goredforwomen.org/index.aspxoods.

You can learn more about lowering your risk at http://www.goredforwomen.org/index.aspx.  Tell five of your loved ones today that heart disease is the number one killer of women and spread the awareness!  Betty White did… sorta!

The Tool for Successful Treatment Planning

At the Inner Door Center® we use the Eating Disorder Treatment Guidelines directly from the American Psychiatric Association (APA).  The tool that we have adopted is a continued stay flow chart developed by Lisa Kantor, JD of Kantor and Kantor Law that mirrors the APA guidelines.  Lisa is committed to helping patients with eating disorders access their insurance coverage when improperly denied by their respective insurance company.  She was featured at the March 2011 International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IADEP) business meeting where she discussed using these evidenced-based standards (the APA guidelines) across the board.  A great number of eating disorder treatment center decisions makers were in attendance at this meeting, and they agreed to band together to adopt these standards.  You can read more about Lisa’s work with eating disorders at her website: http://www.kantorlaw.net/Areas_of_Practice/Eating_Disorders.aspx

Does My Treatment Program Use the APA Guidelines?

When searching for an eating disorder professional or a treatment program, you want to choose one that understands and uses the evidence-based treatment guidelines from APA for making decisions regarding your care.  If they do not use these standards, they may not be practicing evidence-based eating disorder treatment.  At the Inner Door Center® our professional staff is fully trained in these APA guidelines and we use them to guide your individualized evidence-based treatment.

A Summary of the APA Guidelines

We use the APA guidelines continued stay flow chart to steer the entire course of your treatment.  When you come to our clinic, you will receive a thorough assessment from a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, including a therapist, psychiatrist, internist, registered dietitian, and registered medical assistant.  Our Utilization Review Specialist then creates your grid which includes 10 areas of focus for assessment:

1. Medical status
2. Suicidality
3. Weight as a percentage of healthy body weight
4. Motivation to recover, including cooperativeness, insight, and ability to control obsessive thoughts
5. Co-occurring disorders (substance use, depression, anxiety, etc.)
6. Structure needed for eating/gaining weight
7. Ability to control compulsive exercising
8. Purging behavior (laxatives and diuretics)
9. Environmental stress
10. Geographic availability of the treatment program

The grid is divided into 5 levels of treatment: outpatient, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, residential treatment center, and inpatient hospitalization.  Each focus area is assessed for level of care.  You only need to qualify in one focus area to get the highest level of care.  For example, if you are medically stable and have great support at home, but your body weight is <85% of what is considered healthy for your build and you cannot control your purging behavior, you would be referred to the highest level of care – inpatient hospitalization.

What About Insurance Companies?

Currently, Value Options insurance company is the only company that we are aware of that uses the APA evidence-based guidelines when reimbursing for eating disorder treatment.  It is our hope that all insurance companies will eventually adopt these evidence-based guidelines instead of using the “catch-all” guidelines for mental health coverage that leave room for error, and do not apply specifically to eating disorder behavior.

If you are seeking treatment for yourself or a loved one that is struggling with an eating disorder or substance abuse, look no further – we can help you find the best treatment approach at Inner Door Center®.  Visit our website to learn more about the programs that we offer.

What is your job at the Inner Door Center®?:  I am the Program Intake Coordinator – I take care of getting the prospective program patients started. I check on their insurance benefits, prepare all the papers we give them, I schedule the majority of their appointments, and I prepare and hand out their schedules to them each week.

What is your favorite part of your job?:   I love when we genuinely help someone. I may not be a Therapist or one of the Facilitators in the program, but we in the front office are always thanked for what we do for the patients behind the scenes. When you have a patient tell you that this place has really benefited them, that is what makes all the fighting with insurance companies worth it.

What are your favorite hobbies?:  I read a lot, I love to play Softball though it has been way too long since I’ve stepped foot on a baseball diamond. I love movies, my dad and I go every Sunday morning to see the newest release for the week.

What is your favorite book?:   It would have to be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Really the whole series because I’ve read it about 12 times but if I had to pick one of the 7 it would have to be that one.

An interesting/unusual fact about you that you’d like to share:  I put Ketchup on absolutely everything. (So do I Jesseca!!)

Feel free to discuss this question in the comments.  You may keep your identity anonymous if you wish.