Tour the new Park Nicollet Melrose Institute and you’ll notice calming colors, therapeutic gardens and comfortable common areas that promote fellowship and healing. These and many other features were carefully selected because research shows they help patients recover from eating disorders.

“Our entire eating disorders program is based on research,” explains Catherine Cronemeyer, research manager at Park Nicollet Melrose Institute. “In fact, this approach, known as the Melrose Institute treatment model has a history of measuring patients’ success.” (To learn more, read “Eating disorders – the right care can make a difference.”

At Melrose Institute, which opened March 2009, researchers have a visible presence. “Before this move, we were located in a completely different building,” Cronemeyer says. “Now, we’re all together, and patients and their care teams can see how integral research is to our approach.”

Recruiting patients’ feedback
Today, researchers at the institute track patients for three years after they leave treatment. “We perform follow-up surveys, asking patients what they liked and didn’t like about their treatment, how their symptoms have improved and how their transition has been since leaving our program,” Cronemeyer explains. “We will continue to use treatments that help patients improve their quality of life and modify those that haven’t worked.”

Personalized treatment
Research also helps professionals personalize their approach to meet the needs of specific groups of people with eating disorders.

• Mature women have different needs than younger women. “Women in their 30s and 40s often are married and have children,” Cronemeyer says. “Many have had eating disorders for a longer time than younger women, and struggle with greater body dissatisfaction and lower self-esteem. Consequently, we personalize our approach to address these issues and help them juggle treatment with their other responsibilities.”

• Athletes whose sports are judged on individual performance have a greater risk for developing eating disorders than athletes who participate in non-aesthetically based sports, such as ball sports. “Sports that focus on aesthetics, weight or endurance, such as gymnastics, wrestling and running, can increase athletes’ risks of developing eating disorders,” Cronemeyer says. (To learn more about athletes and eating disorders, see “Running on empty. Eating disorders in athletes.”)

• Women who feel obligated to exercise are involved in a new study. “We are comparing how their sense of obligation compares to their levels of competition,” Cronemeyer explains. “We hope to find out if there is a difference among athletes who participate in highly competitive sports compared to those who play at less competitive levels.”

• Adolescents and their families are participating in surveys to identify various risk and protective factors for eating disorders. “We are teaming up with the Search Institute® to look at various developmental assets, such as parenting skills, school curricula and community programs,” Cronemeyer says. “We hope to identify assets that help adolescents become well-adjusted, healthy and successful adults – and those that put them at risk for eating disorders. We will use this information to design family-based treatments.”

The institute is also performing various studies on mature women, people who have been diagnosed with binge eating disorders, and those who have mood disorders along with eating disorders. As leaders, the institute is committed to sharing its findings through presentations and publications.

To learn more about research studies at Melrose Institute, call 952-993-6200 or visit parknicollet.com.