Department of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders
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Overview
The Eating Disorder Service at the Children's Hospital at Westmead is the largest child and adolescent eating disorder service in NSW and an Australian leader in the provision of care for this group.
Hundreds of children throughout NSW and beyond receive care and support from the eating disorder team through its in- and out-patient treatment services, and its educational, mentoring and supervision projects. Key to its success has been a strong clinical research focus driving innovation in the treatment of children and their families with this debilitating condition.
The Service's current research interests include family treatment in eating disorders; early onset eating disorders in children under the age of 12; neuroimaging in eating disorders; refeeding and body composition; neurophysiology in eating disorders, and bone changes in eating disorders.
Research achievements
In 2007 the Children's Hospital at Westmead eating disorder research team received an NHMRC grant for over $500,000 to look at the optimal role of hospital in treating children with eating disorders. This grant, one of only two such grants for eating disorder research in Australia, compares the efficacy of short versus long hospital stays for weight restoration. When completed this randomised controlled trial will be the largest trial of hospital care in eating disorders.
In other research, the team is looking at the role of family based treatment in reducing hospital admission rates. It is also conducting ongoing neuroimaging research looking for unique neurophysiological markers of anorexia nervosa.
An important epidemiological study on early-onset eating disorders in Australian children, published in 2009, received widespread public attention when it found an increase in advanced eating disorders in children as young as five, one in four of them boys.
