Eitan Becher (2001) outlines the significance of empathy as a means of reducing resistance among patients with eating disorders. Becher emphasizes the importance of empathizing with the patient’s difficulties and listening to their needs in cooperating. Such a close acquaintance allows for contact, alleviating loneliness. An empathetic attitude from an outsider who is compassionate and understanding can make her feel safe.

 
A Multi-Professional Team
The ideal treatment for eating disorders involves a multi-professional team that synchronizes various factors to promote the young lady in the best possible way. The residence prioritizes the daily agendas of the girls with the top skilled professionals who address health and behavioral issues at the interpersonal and professional level while contacting the community and protected employment authorities. Psycho-educational training while strengthening social and interpersonal skills, developing healthy life habits and guidance of basic life skills, such as studying or working with a personal assistant, acknowledging the intricate challenges of the daily lives of the patients, and provide tools with professionalism, humanity, sensitivity, understanding and acceptance.

Nutritional Therapy
The daily life of a girl who suffers from an eating disorder is affected by it in all types of homes. Shabbat and Festival meals, a trip to the north with the family, a camp at the end of the year with the girls in the class. If she was still able to participate in these events at the outbreak of the disease, after a period of battling, most of them are impeded. At this point, there are a lot of food details that the girl is not willing to eat, and comments about her looks or weight can trigger difficult thoughts.

When the girl is accepted to the home, she sits with the dietitian to create a starting menu that is acceptable in terms of nutritional details, and safe in terms of her vitals and health. The menu will be expanded based on the patient’s competence after physical monitoring and toleration.

The training staff and House Mother provide a supportive and enjoyable setting for meals. The House Mother cooks daily meals there, creating a warm and homely ambience.

After a while, the menu will continue to be extended by a traffic light system.

Some of the goals of nutritional therapy are to prepare meals independently and maintaining the menu even outside the home.

Rehabilitation Approach
Beit Tamar is a rehabilitative approach that takes into account the sharp and drastic transition from hospitalization to community life, and often the girls do not make the transition from overcrowded hospitalization and intensive supervision to independent community life.

Sometimes these women do not have family and social support and need an intermediate stage. This therapeutic sequence is necessary to prevent withdrawal in eating disorders characterized by the “revolving door” syndrome of repeated hospitalizations that produce resistance to change and are an obstacle to recovery.

The program is designed for girls who have been released from the hospital or are actually receiving ambulatory treatment and are in the process of wanting to recover. Thus far, there is no similar community solution adapted to this population in Israel.

Strengthening Family Ties

Parents must be proactive and dynamic in their presence during the treatment of the girl’s eating disorders with the family practitioner. Parents in the role of “supervisors” become the “bad cop” which increases and intensifies tension within the family. It is often possible to work on the family relationship precisely when the patient is outside the house and eating and supervision is transferred to an external and neutral figure.

Religion as a Source of Support

The approach at Beit Tamar is a respectful and thoughtful attitude to the family’s lifestyle. Without pushing and demanding. Singing on Rosh Chodesh, a stimulating lesson for those who are able to join, a warm atmosphere on Shabbat, support from rabbis and educators.