Description
Eating disorders are one of the most common health problems affecting female adolescents and young women. Their treatment needs multidisciplinary approach and is long-term with need for rehabilitation services after initial intensive phases of treatment. There is a lack of services specialized to treat eating disorders in the country and specialists are not satisfyingly educated in how to address the people and treat the disorders. The project mainly aims to improve the access to quality treatment services for psychic health and to improve the quality of care for young people with eating disorders. The project will improve access to programs for early intervention and prevention, to highly specialized intensive therapy and it will analyze the situation in 3 big cities in order to assess future health needs in the field of eating disorders.The project will benefit young people with eating disorders and specialists engaged with treatment of eating disorders.
Summary of project results
The project “Fresh start for young people with anorexia and bulimia” achieved its general objective to improve the access to qualitative mental-health services and improvement of quality of care for children and young people with eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia) in Bulgaria. This is accomplished by improving the access to both low-threshold programmes for early intervention and prevention and highly specialized intensive therapy for severe eating disorders. There were educated and certified 15 lecturers for prevention campaign in secondary schools. They were also educated and trained for trainers of volunteers – parents and others. There were informed more than 7 000 young people, more than 2000 parents and 500 teachers about symptoms of eating disorders and their early treatment. More than 100 young people and parents have already received personal consultation for their eating problem. This made possible the opening of the first Day Center for eating disorders in Bulgaria in August 2016. The center was furnished and equipped for intensive treatment by the funding of the project. Initially this activity was made possible by educating a highly professional multidisciplinary team in the beginning of 2016. A key management issue was to keep motivated the team working with challenging issues and difficult patients. The team received regular and ongoing supervision by the experts to overcome difficulties. Development of Bulgarian model of intensive treatment is started in 2016 and was ready at the end of the project in 2017. Analysis of the situation with eating disorders in Sofia, Bulgaria is started by conducting a screening for eating disorders in secondary schools in Sofia. It has the aim to assess future health needs in the field of eating disorders. The focus on realizing the reasons for development and maintenance of eating disorders by children and their parents is one of the main privileges of the present project and its long-term effects.
Summary of bilateral results
All the activities in the Project were carried out in close cooperation and supervision by the Norwegian organization “Counselling for Eating Disorders” (“Rådgivning for spiseforstyrrelser - ROS”) which has 31-years of experience in the field and works closely with specialized treatment centers in Norway and develops a network of volunteers on the territory of whole Norway. A significant transfer of know-how and practical experience happens during the partnership in this Project. ROS learned us very practical approaches for working in schools, for training volunteers and all the good practices they have in consulting people with eating disorders and their relatives and close ones. They were supporting us in difficult times in the beginning when we had almost no referrals to the Day Center. We had very practical training for the work with media and ROS representatives gave very impressive interviews for TV broadcasts.