Binge eating and purging can be present in both anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). In both disorders, the...
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TREATING SUICIDALITY IN EATING DISORDERS: HOW DBT SKILLS HELP FAMILIES NAVIGATE SUICIDE AND SELF-INJURY
This post was originally written for FEAST on Dec 28th, 2020: Given very high rates of suicidal and self-injurious behaviours...
Coping with a Pandemic: Radical Acceptance
Is suffering inevitable? Is pain inevitable? In DBT, we teach that pain in life is inevitable but that suffering is...
On Language and Relational Trauma
Not sure if you are ready for this post, or if I am, but its been brewing….so here it...
How Dieting Perpetuates Binge Eating
When you restrict your eating in any way, your body adapts by entering starvation mode. Starvation mode is an...
On the Outdated and Stigmatizing Use of the Term “Borderline”
Despite the leaps and bounds the field has made, in large part due to the life work of...
Clients Cannot Fail Therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is guided by a number of core assumptions about the nature of human behavior and about the...
Dear Santa
A mother sent me the attached “holiday song” stating the following: “these are the lyrics of a song that (my...
The worst part of having a mental illness is that people expect you to behave as if you don’t.
I went to see The Joker last night. It was an extraordinary film to watch, a profound depiction of Arthur...

Anorexia is more than weight loss
Today marks the beginning of Eating Disorder Awareness Week. All I want to say on the subject is that living...

Dealing with your Self-Critic
Let’s talk about the self-critic that sits on your shoulder or lives in your head or floats about during the...
Dear Canada,
I am watching my patient die. Week by week, I watch her body deteriorate, shut down, collapse into itself. I watch as her thoughts become diffuse, no doubt due to atrophy in her prefrontal cortex.
The family is watching their child die in the prime of her life. Labwork shows us that her heart is weak, immune system shutting down…her bowels barely function, her hands cold to the touch and purple from lack of circulation.
There is treatment that would save her life but we can’t access it and while she sits on several waiting lists, I’m afraid she will die waiting. If this was cancer, I don’t believe we would be in this position.
My patient has anorexia nervosa, a brain-based disease with the highest mortality rate (next to the opioid crisis) than any other psychiatric illness.
I could get her to the USA tomorrow where she would be treated but the costs are incredibly high. OHIP won’t cover it. The insurance company won’t cover it.
While my patient’s story is not unique (there are thousands like her, dying, families helpless) I cannot be silent. I refuse to be silent.
Please share. Maybe someone, somewhere, can help us.
Sign and share our petition.