DENVER — Lizzy Earhart didn’t know much about Eating Recovery Center when she agreed to get treatment there in October 2020. She’d already received treatment for anorexia at another treatment provider in Denver, but she’d relapsed immediately after. But Eating Recovery Center was big, well-known. It seemed her best option.
But the months she spent there reinforced her illness, the 21-year-old said, and the punitive environment left her with new trauma.
If she didn’t comply with treatment, she wouldn’t be allowed outside the facility. Patients were lined up each morning to be weighed wearing nothing but ill-fitting mesh or paper gowns. When Earhart expressed concerns about her treatment plans, her psychiatrist told her she was out of options and that her concerns were “just the eating disorder talking.”
“I wouldn’t go outside for a week, two weeks at a time. It just made my anxiety and other issues a lot worse,” Earhart said. “And they would threaten you with an NG (nasogastric) tube, a feeding tube, if you were struggling without medical grounds to do so. They would threaten it as a fear tactic.”