Let's F.E.A.S.T.

Out fund drive is winding down and will end at the close of the year.  Thank you all who have so generously given!  For those of you still thinking about it, now it the time as over the next two weeks you donation can be tripled!!! F.E.A.S.T. recently received a $5000 matching gift (if we get $5000 in donations between now and the end of the year it will be matched) AND .... one very generous donor has now stepped forward and pledged an additional  $5,000 for when we reach the target for the first $5,000 matching gift. That means that as soon as we raise $5,000 (see conditions below), we will get an additional $10,000! There are three kinds of donations that will trigger this match:   1.One-time donations of $100 and up, 2. Monthly Recurring Pledges of $10 and up, and 3. Annual Recurring Pledges or $50 and up. One of the items your donations will support is the online parent to parent network  Around the Dinner Table  (ATDT).  On ATDT families empower othe

by Jennifer Whisman,  West Virginia U.S.A. 1.  How did you find your path to parent-advocacy?  I’m not sure I ever made a conscious decision to become involved in parent advocacy.  I’ve spent most of my professional career involved with individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), their families and educators.  Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting many parents of children with ASD who became advocates for their children.  Sometimes these parents were initially reluctant or struggled to express their opinion but over time developed more self-confidence and a “voice” about issues pertaining to the care, treatment and education of their child.  Collectively, parents of children with ASDs have changed the types of supports and education their children received in a relatively short time frame.  It seemed natural that I would then become an advocate for my own child and others with eating disorders. 2. What does your advocacy work consist of/ how do you define

Guest Post by Stephanie Knatz, Ph.D. ,  University of California, San Diego Family-based treatment (FBT), developed and manualized by James Lock and Daniel Le Grange, has an indisputable amount of evidence affirming its effectiveness for the treatment of adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN). But what about young adults? There remains work to be done to be able to answer this question empirically. Studies evaluating FBT in samples of young adults are extremely limited. 1 The average age of adolescents participating in family-based treatment in rigorous FBT trials is roughly 14-15 years. 2 As such, whether FBT is effective, and to what degree it works for individuals suffering at older chronological ages are questions that science has only begun to do the work to answer. Whether FBT is an effective treatment for young adults with anorexia is a reflection of a broader theoretical question about the role of family support and involvement in the treatment of adults with AN. It

Did you know? Part of F.E.A.S.T.'s Mission is to Advocate for Caregivers in the Professional ED Community. F.E.A.S.T.'s Advocacy Budget: Advocacy for Caregivers is one of our most expensive programs because it involves travel, registration fees, exhibition fees and membership fees. F.E.A.S.T. is a member of the  Eating Disorder Coalition  and pays Membership fees for two directors to join the  Academy for Eating Disorders . We attend and exhibit at the AED's Annual International Conference. F.E.A.S.T. also sends one representative to the bi-annual  NIMH Alliance for Research Progress  meetings in Washington, DC. We would like to begin exhibiting beyond the ED field to child andadolescent medical professionals, for example, but do not have a reliable enough donor base to budget for this. F.E.A.S.T. has also done fundraising for other important initiatives. We raised $14,000 in 2014 for the  Charlotte's Helix  genetic database project, and we r

By Nicki Wilson 
 1. How did you find your path to parent advocacy?   Unintentionally!  My oldest Daughter, Emma, was displaying clear signs of an eating disorder at the beginning of 2011. We faithfully headed off to the family Dr. confident that all would be sorted with a ready diagnosis and subsequent clear pathway of treatment to certain recovery. Our experience, unbeknown to us at the time, was typical of the majority of families in our situation not only in our country, New Zealand, but around the world. It was frightening, distressing, devastating! Like most parents / carers of loved ones with an eating disorder we negotiated and navigated our way through a range of barriers to her recovery: from the shocking lack of knowledge and access to evidence based treatment in the medical world, to the isolation and shame and stigma among family and friends.  It was when we found F.E.A.S.T ., and the Around The Dinner Table Forum , that we truly gained an understanding