Severe and Enduring Eating Disorder Patients at Stockholms Center for Eating Disorders in Sweden

Patients with severe and enduring eating disorders (SEED) are seriously ill and have a low quality of life. In 2014, a special unit based on case management (CM), for patients with SEED (the Eira unit) was started at Stockholm Centre for Eating Disorders, Sweden. Eating disorder is a serious illness that creates a great deal of suffering. Most patients who undergo specialized eating disorder treatment will be healthy, but a small percentage of the patients develop a SEED. SEED patient have gone through numerous of treatments and has been to several specialists units for years as well as they has completed many different therapies without getting fee from the eating disorder (ED). Due to the long term sick in ED the SEED patient is often alone and has difficulties to cope with everyday life situations. SEED patients are a vulnerable patient population with a great suffering and poverty to release the identity of the ED. However, no previous study is done in which patients with SEED themselves describe their own theory about why they are still ill and how specialized eating disorder care has affected them. In the ED field, there is a growing consensus that treatment of patients with SEED needs to be multi-professional, with a focus on improving the patients' social situation, minimizing medical complications, and enhancing quality of life and independence, rather than focusing one-sided on symptom reduction. Is case management a way to help the SEED patients witness a better quality of life? Besides the personal suffering of patients and their families, SEED is also associated with high costs for health care and for society in general.