Courtesy of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Dr. Richard Kreipe was honored for his service to the field of pediatric medicine at the International Conference on Eating Disorders in New York City last Saturday, March 29.
Founding Director of the Child and Adolescent Eating Disorder Program at Golisano Children’s Hospital, Kreipe received the Leadership Award for Clinical, Administrative or Educational Service from the Academy of Eating Disorders.
Kreipe has committed to studying and treating pediatric eating disorders in adolescent populations for over thirty years. In that time, he co-edited the first “Textbook of Adolescent Medicine,” published in 1992, served as president of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, and was given the Adele D. Hoffman award in 2003 by the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Adolescent Health.
Kreipe is currently the Medical Director for the Western New York Comprehensive Care Center for Eating Disorders and directs the Child and Adolescent Eating Disorder Program.
Currently, about 80 percent of young patients in the program attain healthy eating patterns and body weights and maintain their recovery for four or more years after treatment. Dr. Kreipe said he believes that the percentage may be even higher.
The Child and Adolescent Eating Disorder Program is relatively non-traditional in the eating disorders field, offering a unique treatment model that shifts the paradigm for understanding such disorders.
“The psych model tended to focus on psychopathology—what was wrong with you,” Kreipe said regarding the older psychological paradigm for understanding eating disorders.
At Golisano Children’s Hospital, however, it’s a different story.
“We tend to look not so much at deficits, but at building strengths,” Kreipe said.
Structured around the biopsychosocial approach as well as the model of Positive Youth Development (PYD), the Child and Adolescent Eating Disorder Program takes a comprehensive approach to treatment and care.
“80 to 95 percent of people who develop an eating disorder develop it in adolescence,” Kreipe said.
According to Kreipe, given that adolescence is a time of extreme change on a number of levels, eating disorders are developmental disorders rather than psychopathologies.
Kreipe said the manifestation of an eating disorder is conditioned by biological, psychological and social contexts.
So what are the contextual factors that will cause the manifestation of an eating disorder in an individual who is predisposed to get one?
While the answer to that question will take time and much more research, there is still hope for individuals with existing eating disorders.
The model of Positive Youth Development, which originated within the social sciences, sees adolescents not as a bundle of risk factors but as people with valuable strengths who can contribute to positive solutions—in this case for their own health.
“It’s not adults doing things for kids, it’s adults and adolescents working together,” Kreipe said.
He added that adults are integral in providing support.
“[Adolescents] need help, they need encouragement, they need nurturing, they need mentoring,” Kreipe said, although he ultimately emphasized that it’s up to the adolescent with the eating disorder to begin the process of healing.
“People don’t choose to get eating disorders, but they have to choose to let go of them,” Kreipe said.
When asked what the best part of his job was, Kreipe said, “seeing that kids can get better.”
Mitchell is a member of the class of 2014.
