ABSTRACT
I am a psychologist and I direct a child and adolescent outpatient eating disorders clinic located in a tertiary care hospital that is also a primary teaching hospital for a university medical school. For the past 10 years I have worked collaboratively with physicians to assist children and adolescents who have become compromised in their ability to care for their bodies. For the most part, my physician colleagues are pediatricians in private practice; however, some staff hospital outpatient pediatric clinics, while others provide care in neighborhood health centers. All of the physicians desire to detect these problems as soon as possible after onset to minimize risk to the child and to facilitate sustained remission. But, as collaborators, we question ourselves repeatedly as to how the problems could be detected even sooner and, more importantly, we ask how eating disorders could be prevented from occurring. This chapter describes my efforts in developing collaborative efforts with physicians in regard to secondary and tertiary prevention and offers some suggestions congruent with the long-term goal of primary prevention. Multidisciplinary prevention and treatment of eating disorders or any other illness requires that we engage each other with open minds and a clear understanding that each of us has something of value to contribute to patient care.
