4 Best Eating Disorder Treatment Centers in Connecticut
Takeaway: Connecticut offers a range of eating disorder treatment options, from therapy to medical support, tailored to individual needs. With the right help, recovery is possible, leading to a healthier relationship with food and yourself. Here, we’ll go over some of the best options for eating disorder treatment in CT so you can make an informed decision.
"I have a bad relationship with food" is a statement that I hear in almost every first appointment. Our culture is so inundated with diet culture messaging that at some point, we have all had sub-clinical levels of disordered eating. If you have ever done a fad diet, yup that counts. Our mental health professionals specialize in treating eating disorders and disordered eating. We also know how to target disordered eating that is derived from co occurring disorders, such as ADHD, OCD, and more.
Eating disorders are one of the most lethal diagnosis in the DSM. It is only second to opiate addiction. That is how dangerous it can become.
How we selected these eating disorder treatment centers
When looking for eating disorder treatment ct, it can be hard to know where to start. Rarely, if ever, is an eating disorder just about the food, and you want to make sure that you are seeking treatment centers that are able to have a multifaceted treatment approach.
Multidisciplinary Support or collaborative approach
Varied level of intensity
Ability to care for co occurring disorders
Health at Every Size (HAES) alignment
Stabilization vs Recovery Support
Somatic Approaches
4 top-rated Connecticut eating disorder treatment centers
1. Renfrew Center
Renfrew has been a family owned and operated treatment center for over 40 years and were one of the first eating disorder treatment centers in the United States. Although they were one of the firsts in disordered eating, their treatment center is also equipped to stabilize and treat individuals with trauma and substance abuse disorders. They are only serving Connecticut virtually, and offer patients an intensive outpatient program online. They also have physical locations all over the country.
Virtual and across the country
Inpatient, intensive outpatient programs, and day programs.
ARFID, OSFED, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge eating disorder, Orthorexia, and Diabulimia
White Plains, NY has a 5 star rating on Google
Learn more about Renfrew here.
2. Lift Wellness Group
Lift Wellness is an IAEDP member. They treat mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Additionally they offer couples and family therapy, which is greatly beneficial when facing relationship difficulties in recovery. They offer testing for neurodivergence such as Autism and ADHD, which often overlap with disordered eating. Lift Wellness also offers Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR), a treatment that promotes neuroplasticity and allows for new perspectives to be taken when reviewing traumatic memories or thoughts.
Westport, CT
Individual, Group, and Registered Dietitian services
Anxiety, depression, and Eating Disorders
4.8 stars on Google
Check out Lift Wellness.
3. The Newport Institute
The Newport Institute is a rapidly growing treatment center with centers across the country. They provide treatment support at different levels of intensity for a myriad of mental health conditions. Their eating disorder program specialized in treatment for ages 18-35.
Fairfield, CT
Residential treatment, intensive outpatient programs, and step down care team
Mental health disorders, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Orthorexia, Pica, Rumination Disorder, ARFID, BDD
Mixed reviews with an average of 3 stars on Google
Learn more about The Newport Institute here.
4. Cope & Calm Counseling
Cope & Calm Counseling is a small practice in Connecticut that centers its mission around inclusivity and ensures that all bodies, regardless of shape, size, or ability, feel welcome. The practice is IAEDP and HAES aligned, and has received training from both Lewis & Clark College's certification program for Eating Disorders and The Renfrew Center. The founder, Amber Young, has consulted on the special interest group on Eating Disorders and OCD within the IOCDF.
Danbury, CT and virtually for all of Connecticut
individual therapy with intensive sessions available as needed
Anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD/ASD, trauma, and disordered eating.
5 star review on Google
Check out Cope & Calm Counseling.
FAQs about eating disorder treatment
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Due to the high mortality rates and serious implications of these disorders, it is imperative that your recovery journey includes wrap around support from a multidisciplinary team. Your care system should include a registered dietitian, primary care physician, and a mental health therapist. Ideally all of this providers will be anti-diet and HAES informed, so that there is similar language and approaches. Additional specialists may be needed depending on how the body is functioning. The mind is the primary source of disordered eating, but the mind cannot be treated if the brain is starving. Early eating disorder recovery and patient stabilization should begin under the care of a physician, prior to or simultaneously to all other supports, and depending on severity partial hospitalization might be needed.
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A combination of somatically focused therapies and approaches the reshape thinking patterns, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are evidence based therapies for these disorders. Somatic approaches allow clients to feel more comfortable in their own skin. It can help challenge body image ideals and reframe the purpose of living in a body. CBT and ACT help retrain what thoughts a client pays attention to and how they engage with them. These approaches allow patients to prioritize their own goals, rather than falling into thought traps about the default body and diet culture. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is another approach that can help clients relate to themselves and their many different motivations better, leading to self acceptance. Family based treatment is an integral part of recovery as well. Family members can help maintain a structured environment at home, monitor food intake, and assist with healing for long term recovery.
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If you would like to learn more, there are some fantastic resources out there! My preferred podcasts are "All bodies. All foods." produced by The Renfew Center and "Food and Body Freedom" with Nadia Felsch. On instagram you can follow, @dietculturerebel, @katiejeffreydietitian, and @almondmilkisnuts. If you are a reader, "The Body is Not an Apology", by Sonya Renee Taylor and "Becoming Safely Embodied" by Dierdre Far are great reads. If you would like more book resources, check out the options on the National Association of Anorexia and Related Disorders site.
If you are looking for more tailored care and are ready to stop thinking about the weight and start focusing on the underlying issues, outpatient care with a therapist is a great place to start. Therapy at a private practice can assist many clients on their recovery journey. Working one on one with a therapist can help prevent recurrent episodes and provide ongoing support. Healing from these conditions requires a full spectrum of interventions. The right therapist can help you identify which behaviors to prioritize modifying first.
Cope & Calm Counseling navigates their clients through that intense fear of food and gaining weight, and the history of your eating patterns that have lead to binge eating disorder, self-induced vomiting, restricting, and other compensatory behaviors. We can collaborate with and refer you to dietitians that we trust to provide you with nutritional counseling and support your eating patterns and body image. From our initial assessment through completing treatment, you will be treated like the amazing person you are and not be reduced to a number on a scale.
Final thoughts on eating disorder treatment in Connecticut
Given how insidiously damaging the language we use around food is, we all can benefit from a reframe. These resources above can help parents learn how commenting on weight gain or loss can have a negative impact on their own and their children's body image. They will shine light on how even out medical institutions get distracted when treating a person in a larger body and focus only on diet and exercise rather than medical intervention.
Take Client A for example. Client A is a young adult, with an immensely caring nature and impressive intellect. She struggles with racing thoughts that cause anxiety and lead to low moods. She reports that she forgets to eat daily, lives on coffee, and always feels tired. In our time together, I was able to assess her cognitive difficulties and found that her racing thoughts were actually more symptomatic of ADHD with over activation and chronic overwhelm presenting as anxiety. We found that not only did she struggle with body image, but that the executive dysfunction and difficulty paying attention to physical hunger cues was leading to procrastination or avoidance of making and eating a meal. We of course talked about how food made her feel and evaluated how she talked about her body, but we were also able to support her planning and decision making when it comes to meals. She enjoys coffee and has it everyday, but she no longer depends on it to make it through the afternoon crash. This has helped greatly with her body feeling less anxious.
Another client had a similar story. She too had ADHD and a history of restriction. She would eat one large meal at the end of the day without too much thought into the nutrient balance. She reported that even in her hardest moments when she was eating the fewest calories, she would lose a few pounds and then just get stuck there. After a few weeks of support and working with a dietitian, she was feeling better in her body but found that she wasn't feeling lighter. I suggested a few things to ask her doctor about that tend to overlap with ADHD, such as PCOS and insulin resistance. Turns out, she had an insulin resistance and the years of her doctors telling her to diet and exercise were way off the mark. She needed to be eating more, a lot more and with more consideration and a medication that could help regulate her insulin's productivity.
These struggles are all too common in our practice, but fortunately so are the recovery stories. We know that we can help you build self-compassion and the courage needed to face food without fear.
Are you ready to shake that Terminator like vision that counts calories with a quick glance? Are you just sick and tired of thinking about food? Are you done with hiding when you eat and missing out of events with friends and family? Are you bored of obsessing about your body weight? Then give us a call or submit a form on on our website. It can be scary and it can almost feel like grief or simply irresponsible to pursue changing your relationship to food, but we will encourage you and help you reclaim your thinking process so that they are working for you rather than reducing you to a number on a scale or a pant size.
