EDs (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder) are multi-causal disorders and, therefore, a multidimensional therapeutic approach is necessary that affects all areas affected by the disease. “As a complex disorder, eating disorders can only be approached from complexity. Countless biological, personal, social and family variables must be taken into account as a whole, not in an atomized way, so that the treatments are truly decisive”, explains Antoni Grau, Clinical Director of Korian Spain.
Ita was founded in 1998 to offer specialized assistance in mental health problems. Ita's treatment for this type of pathology has become an international benchmark, since it puts the person at the center of treatment.
“In the conversations of our teams, the protagonists are not the diagnoses, but the people, their idiosyncratic suffering and their needs. It is from these needs that the treatments we have come from, research when we do not know something and innovation when we want to respond to new detected needs”, affirms the Clinical Director.
Ita's method of intervention seeks to eradicate the symptoms of the disease, but it always does so by intervening in the factors that produce them. In this way, it is also possible to minimize relapses.
For all this, Ita has an interdisciplinary team made up of psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, nutritionists and social educators. All of them work in a coordinated manner to recover all the areas affected by the TCA.
"EDs are the paradigm of heterogeneity, a diversity that arises from the crossroads between personality, social, biological, family and life history factors that makes it impossible to find two identical cases to which to apply, therefore, the same treatment". For this reason, Ita offers a specialized and personalized treatment, taking into account the experiences, life experiences and needs of each patient. A point to highlight in the treatment of eating disorders is the work with the family.
As Antoni Grau comments, “at Ita we believe that the family plays a very important role in the entire patient recovery process. For this reason, we work with the family from the beginning of the treatment, aware that by intervening with the family we directly improve the treatment prognosis and the patient's progress towards achieving personal autonomy”.
Ita has a care network made up of more than 40 centers in the main cities of the Spanish territory and with different resources to be able to offer continuity of care adapted to the needs and severity of each case.
“It is not uncommon that during a treatment process the patient must go through the different resources. To avoid discontinuities, coordination between devices and professional teams that work under the same therapeutic model is very important”. With proper treatment, a person with an Eating Disorder can recover. According to the Clinical Practice Guide on eating disorders of the Ministry of Health, around 50-60% of patients fully recover; 30% do it partially; and only 10-20% become chronic.
“We pay a lot of attention to continuously evaluating the results of our interventions. Although our discharge criteria are very demanding and are not limited to the disappearance of eating symptoms, our success rate is between 70% and 88% depending on resources”.
Ita has become a benchmark in the treatment of eating disorders during these 25 years thanks to its commitment to patients, its person-centered methodology, the high specialization of its treatments, its extensive healthcare network and its interdisciplinary team. He has extensive experience in this type of pathology.
