• What is ANRED

We are a website dedicated to making it easier for you to learn about eating disorders and how to recover from them.

• Do you do counseling by e-mail from this site?

No, we do not. We believe that eating disorders are serious problems that deserve professional attention. Good treatment begins with medical and psychological evaluations and then continues according to a thoughtfully constructed treatment plan. That plan is subject to revisions based in part on careful observations of the client and his or her expressions, voice tones, and other non-verbal behaviors. Because e-mail does not give us access to that kind of information, we are not comfortable providing treatment in anything but a face-to-face context. ANRED information is not, and was never intended to be, a substitute for medical or psychological care.

If you send us e-mail, we will respond. We will give you the best information we have, and if you ask for them, we will give you our opinions. We cannot, however, diagnose or treat problems as complex as eating disorders by e-mail.

Eating disorders are treatable, and people do recover from them. Almost always, however, recovery demands professional treatment. The sooner you begin, the easier it will be for you to take control of disordered eating. Don’t let embarrassment or false pride get in the way of your seeking the help you need.

• Why don’t you have footnotes? What are your sources? How can I know that the information on this site is accurate?

Our site is designed for lay people and consumers. We do not pretend to be a professional or scholastic resource.

Our information, including the statistics we set forth, is accurate. It comes from many sources including the materials listed in our bibliography. If you need specific citations, ask your school research librarian to help you with a computer search of the literature using key words like “epidemiology,” “etiology,” “anorexia nervosa,” “bulimia nervosa,” and so on.

• Is your site up to date? How often do you revise it?

We are up to date. Our pages include some of the very latest information about eating disorders and their treatment. To keep ourselves current, we rely heavily on the Eating Disorders Review, a digest of timely research published six times a year by Gurze Books.