Bay Area Eating Disorder Program

• Does your teen/young adult need a collaborative one stop out patient team?
• Is your teen or young adult stepping down from inpatient, hospital, or a residential care program and need a team of experts to support reintegrating back home?
• Do you want a more holistic and collaborative approach to eating disorder treatment?​
• Does your teen or young adult need more support, but are not sure if an intensive outpatient (IOP) or partial hospitalization (PHP) program is the way to go?
• Are you worried that if your teen or young adult doesn’t get help, they will need hospitalization or a residential program?
• Is your teen or young adult on a waiting list for an IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program), PHP (Partial Hospitalization) or residential program, but want additional support now?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Bay Area Eating Disorder Program might be right for you! Call (408) 370-7731 or email admin@bayareanutrition.com.

• Individual Therapy
• Family Therapy
• Nutrition Therapy​
• Medical Monitoring
• DBT Group Therapy
• Routine care team collaboration
• Evaluations @ week 4 and 8

Additional supports can include:

• Meal/Snack Support and Food Exposures
• Psychiatry
• Parent/Caregiver Skill Building and Support Group

Choose from one of Campbell Teen & Family Therapy’s Inc. highly qualified therapists with specialties designed to meet the needs of their patients. CTFT offers several different therapy modalities in order to provide individualized treatment.

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
• CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
• DBT (Dialectic Behavior Therapy)
• ERP (Exposure Response Prevention Therapy)
• Family Systems
• FBT (Family Based Therapy)

Parent involvement in therapy is crucial to a successful outcome in eating disorder treatment. We will work with parents and families to restore balance so families can thrive. Family therapy can range from everyone in the family attending to parent/child, siblings or to just parents attending depending on the needs of the family. Sibling support can be vital if one child has high needs that take up the attention in the family.

We offer both family systems family therapy and FBT (family-based therapy).

Family Based Therapy:

FBT is a type of family therapy, where the client and the family work with the therapist together. FBT is different from traditional family therapy in that:

• FBT is “agnostic” about the cause of eating disorders, and does not try to find underlying issues or causes
• Parents are asked to take over decisions about food for the first part of treatment
• Siblings are included
• Therapists coach parents in finding their own solutions to challenges during treatment
• Food is viewed as medicine
• There is a “family meal” session early in treatment where clients are asked to resist, and parents are coached in how to overcome the eating disorder resistance.

A modified version of FBT may be an option for families who qualify.

Nutrition therapy is a vital part of eating disorder recovery. Without consistent and adequate nutrition, both the brain and body cannot function optimally—and true recovery remains out of reach. That’s where the dedicated team of registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) from Bay Area Nutrition (BAN) comes in.

Working closely with clients and their families, our RDNs explore the complex dynamics of how, what, when, and why individuals eat—or don’t eat. These are not typical dietitians. The BAN RDNs bring specialized training, advanced certifications, and years of experience in treating eating disorders.

Our RDNs dive into the nuances of eating patterns, restriction, and compensatory behaviors. They help clients and families develop sustainable eating plans, break down barriers to adequate nutrition, and rebuild healthy relationships with food and the body. They collaborate seamlessly with the broader treatment team at BAED to ensure integrated care.

The BAN RDNs are trained in evidence-based approaches such as Family-Based Treatment (FBT), Exposure Response Prevention (ERP), Intuitive Eating, and other modalities tailored to support recovery at every stage.

Medical Monitoring During Eating Disorder Treatment

Medical evaluation and follow up is essential in eating disorder treatment. We want to make sure you are stable and progressing in your treatment. We have good working relationships with many physicians in the area and work with them to coordinate care and ensure you are receiving the best care possible.

The medical provider will check the client’s weight, vitals and labs. Orthostatic vitals, where your provider will take blood pressure and heart rate while lying down and then standing up, can help us determine if the client has a malnourished heart or is dehydrated. Different labs are necessary

Why This Matters

Eating disorders affect the body in many ways, a person can “look fine” and still have serious medical, physical and nutritional problems. Regular medical monitoring helps us catch problems and intervene early allowing you to continue with recovery.

The power of group therapy is incredible. It helps to break down isolation, shame, guilt, loneliness and fosters good social skills and peer support. The BAED program includes an DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) group that will help your teen learn skills to manage emotions while they are in treatment.

DBT is renowned for its effectiveness in equipping individuals with practical skills to manage emotional distress, enhance interpersonal effectiveness, and navigate through life’s challenges with a renewed sense of control and purpose. This group will immerse you in a supportive setting where you will explore and practice DBT skills, such as mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness, all tailored to help you reshape your self-talk and thought patterns.

One thing that sets the BAED program apart from general out patient care or other programs is our commitment to good communication and collaboration. Team collaboration is a vital aspect of a successful response to treatment. Out patient eating disorder providers can be pressed for time, making routine team communication and collaboration difficult. Our program providers are committed to sharing communication after every session to ensure that all providers are on the same page. All recommendations for treatment include input from everyone on the team: client, parents, registered dietitian, individual, group, and family therapists, medical care provider, and psychiatrist (if needed).

Meal/Snack Support and Food Exposures:

The purpose of Meal Support is to develop and practice recovery based nutrition and eating behaviors in a variety of settings. Meal Support is also helpful in coaching parents/loved ones on strategies to improve nutrition repletion and/or to give parents and loved ones a break from the demand of meal/snack supervision.

Food and Eating Exposures allows clients gradually exposure to challenging or avoided foods in a supportive environment. The goal is to appropriately reduce food-related anxiety and increase tolerance to a wider variety of foods and eating environments.

Parent/Caregiver Skill Building and Support Group:
Being a parent or caregiver of someone with an eating disorder can be isolating, frustrating, scary, overwhelming, and exhausting. This group is for parents and caregivers ready to support a loved one navigating an eating disorder — while staying grounded themselves. This 6 week series is designed to help you step into the role of a skillful, steady, and nonjudgmental supporter, fostering recovery with confidence and presence.

Psychiatry (as needed)

A psychiatrist referral may be needed in eating disorder treatment to provide specialized assessment and management of co-occurring mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, OCD, or trauma-related disorders, which commonly occur alongside eating disorders. Our Psychiatrist, Dr. Amit Desai can evaluate the impact of starvation or purging on mood and cognition, differentiate between psychiatric symptoms and those secondary to malnutrition, and assess risk factors such as suicidality or self-harm. He can also prescribe and monitor psychiatric medications that may support treatment, particularly when symptoms significantly interfere with nutritional rehabilitation or therapy.

Tracking Progress in Treatment

At our program, we believe that progress is more than just physical changes—it’s about supporting overall well-being. To help guide treatment, we use a variety of evidence-based tools that give us insight into how a client is doing emotionally, behaviorally, nutritionally, physically and in their relationship with food. These tools may include assessments such as the EAT-26, SRS, ORS, Burns Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, SUDS (subjective units of distress) scale, and VOC (validity of cognition).

By checking in regularly, we’re able to see what’s working, where extra support might be needed, and how each individual is moving forward in their recovery journey. This helps us collaborate with clients and families to ensure treatment is meaningful and personalized every step of the way.

We provide progress updates to clients and families every 4 weeks, so you know how treatment is going. At the 4-week mark, we review your progress to see if treatment goals are being met and adjust the plan if needed. At 8 weeks, we will complete another progress review and discuss next steps together, including recommendations for ongoing care after the program if needed.

Is The Bay Area Eating Disorder Program for me?

BAED is right for you if:

• Your teen or young adult is struggling with restricting, bingeing, purging, or compulsive exercise and needs more support.
• You want a family-centered program that involves parents actively in treatment and supports your whole family’s healing.
• Your teen or young adult needs more help than traditional therapy offers but does not meet the criteria for a higher level of care.
• You want a program that works with your physician who will monitor medical stability with regular weight checks, vitals, and lab work to ensure your teen or young adult’s safety during recovery.
• You value a program that blends evidence-based therapy (CBT, DBT, EMDR, ERP, Family Systems, Family-Based Treatment) with a warm, personalized approach.
• You are looking for a clear plan that includes nutrition support, family support, coping skills for the individual, and ongoing progress updates so you know how your teen or young adult is doing.
• You want a treatment team that will collaborate with your existing medical provider and each other for seamless care.