The first step to assuring that an eating disorder can be properly treated is making sure that an accurate eating disorder assessment is in place. Eating disorders do not all look alike, and can take a multitude of different forms. It is highly erroneous to believe that all people who are anorexic are anorexic in the same way.

Being anorexic can take on many different forms, as can being bulimic, and it's important to know what exactly the characteristics of the eating disorder in question are before attempting to begin treating the disorder. The actual eating disorder assessment is the first and one of the most important, steps in a treatment plan.

How to Make an Eating Disorder Assessment

An eating disorder assessment should be made on a number of different levels. Some of the assessment should entail direct questioning about how the person feels about food, how the person feels about eating, and how the person feels about their body and how their body is changing. These feelings are a very important base for an eating disorder assessment.

In addition, more indirect questions should be answered, and even in a fun way. You can ask the person coming in for assessment to complete a questionnaire, even in a fun way, which contains a number of questions asking for a fun response. For example, a bunch of words (or pictures) are shown, and the idea is that you have to say the first thing that comes to mind. For example, if you show a picture of a tropical beach, some people will say (beautiful) and some will say (gross).

Ask for all of these associations in rapid succession and ask that the person give, honestly, the first word that comes to mind. When you are through, either the same day, or another day, you can give the person back their answers and walk through them together. If you learn that someone doesn't like beaches because they have an intense fear of being seen in a bathing suit, you've got something to work with.

The idea behind this eating disorder assessment is not that you take their answers and psychoanalyze them, but that they take their own answers and open up a dialogue with them. While this is happening, you are not only building a constructive start, you are also getting a more complete eating disorder assessment and can thus better understand what this person is living with.

As you develop a better relationship, questions should become more direct. Questions should assess attitudes about eating disorders, attitudes about food, and attitudes about body image. As you go deeper and deeper into the assessment of the eating disorder, counseling will naturally start to happen throughout the process.