What to expect from Equip treatment
Before treatment begins
You’ll have an initial phone conversation with a member of our admissions team to make sure Equip is right for you. In this conversation we’ll talk about what symptoms you’re experiencing, as well as your living situation, insurance coverage, goals for treatment, and more.
The next step is to share some more details about your eating disorder. You’ll take a 30-minute online survey about your symptoms, history, any prior treatment, and other aspects of your illness. You’ll also have another more in-depth phone screening with someone from our team.
If we need to confirm your medical stability before beginning Equip treatment, you’ll schedule an appointment with your doctor. Our team will work with you and your provider to make this process as seamless as possible.
You'll talk with someone from our team to get set up with an Equip account and schedule your provider appointments for your first week.
Meet your dedicated care team
Every patient who comes to Equip is matched with a multidisciplinary care team. They collaborate with you and each other to provide wraparound support. 
Registered dietitian
Establishing regular eating habits and stopping disordered behaviors (like restricting, purging, or binge eating) is a key part of eating disorder treatment. Dietitians work to achieve this through an individualized meal plan, nutritional education, mealtime support, and more.
All Equip dietitians are registered dietitians (RDs) or registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) experienced in helping people recover from eating disorders.
Licensed therapist
Therapists work to address the psychological and emotional components of an eating disorder. They pull from the leading evidence-based modalities to create personalized treatment plans that may include both individual and family sessions.
All Equip therapists specialize in treating eating disorders.
Peer mentor
A peer mentor is someone who has recovered from an eating disorder and completed specialized mentorship training. They know what patients are going through, and provide a listening ear and actionable advice from their own experience.
Family mentor
Recovery can be hard on those supporting a loved one through treatment. Family mentors are people who know this firsthand, and have completed specialized mentorship training. Family mentors provide empathy, encouragement, and advice.
Medical provider
Equip's medical providers monitor patients' physical health. They stay on top of any existing or new health issues, track weight and vitals, and manage prescriptions, if needed.
Our medical providers all specialize in treating eating disorders and include physicians, pediatricians, psychiatrists, registered nurses and nurse practitioners.
What treatment schedules look like
During your first two weeks of treatment, you’ll met with each of your providers to assess your needs and develop a personalized treatment plan. This might seem like a lot of appointments at first, but they’re important—and you can join from wherever is convenient for you.
After those initial two weeks, appointments generally become less frequent and can be scheduled to accommodate busy work or school schedules.
For patients under 18
For adult patients
Groups at Equip
Equip treatment is virtual, but you can still connect with and get support from others on similar journeys. We run a wide variety of groups that give you the opportunity to learn more about a specific topic, get ideas on how to handle challenging situations, learn skills, and more.
Below is a sampling of some of the groups you can choose to join.
Adult 2SLGBTQIA+
support group
Men’s group
BIPOC support group
Teen 2SLGBTQIA+ support group
Adult patient skills group
Nutrition group
Teen patient skills group
Athlete processing group
Relapse prevention at Equip
At Equip, one reason we seek insurance authorization for up to a year of treatment is so that we can support patients during early recovery in order to prevent a relapse.
While in treatment, you’ll work with your team to create a "relapse prevention plan" that helps you anticipate and prepare for stressors that may trigger a relapse. Because treatment continues after your eating disorder is stabilized, you have a safety net during those vulnerable first few months of recovery.
What Equip treatment
looked like for real patients.
All names and identifying information have been changed in accordance with privacy laws.
FAQ about Equip treatment
The reality is that effective treatment does take time. But unlike in-person care, which requires you to put life on pause, virtual treatment lets you attend sessions when and where it works for you.
Equip patients fit treatment into their lives in many different ways. While many people take their sessions from home, we also have students joining from a teacher’s office at school, working adults dialing in from a break room, even patients attending appointments from a parking lot.
The initial two weeks of treatment are relatively intense in terms of the number of appointments, but after that, your provider team will work with you to schedule sessions at times that your busy life can accommodate.
Who attends appointments depends on a few factors, including the age of the patient and which loved ones will be involved in treatment.
Certain appointments, like peer mentor sessions, are for the patient alone, while family mentor sessions are just for loved ones. For young patients doing family-based treatment (FBT), family members will be involved in more sessions, whereas older patients and those not doing FBT may have more solo appointments.
We encourage you to “bring your village” to treatment, because we know that doing so improves odds of lasting recovery. But we also know that looks different for each person, and we’ll work with you to find a balance that feels right.
We monitor all patients for medical stability throughout treatment, and that includes regularly checking weight and vital signs (like blood pressure and heart rate). We can do this in a few different ways:
In-person: You can go to your local doctor or health center to get your weight and vitals checked, and have them sent to us. We might recommend this for people who are at high risk for medical complications.
Supervised: You can weigh yourself at home with the support of a loved one or (virtual) support from your Equip therapist.
Independent: Once you’ve made significant progress in treatment (or if weight isn’t a focus of treatment), you can weigh yourself independently and securely send it to your team.
Your team will recommend the best approach and frequency for collecting your weight and vitals based on your diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment concerns.
Recovery looks different for everyone, so there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. However, at Equip, we seek insurance authorization for up to a year of treatment.
This may seem like a long time, but it doesn’t mean that you’re going to multiple weekly sessions for a full year. You’ll start off with a high frequency of appointments, but then they’ll taper off as you make progress through treatment.
Usually, patients stabilize before the year is over, and then have the support of their team as they navigate those vulnerable first few months in recovery. This protects patients against relapse and gives them a safety net if they stumble.
Our team will verify your insurance information before you start at Equip. If Equip is in-network with your insurance, you can expect to pay your plan's copays or coinsurance. Throughout your time with Equip, our financial counselors are available to help with any questions or concerns related to your costs.
If Equip isn’t in-network with your insurance, we offer a private pay option. We will work with you directly to review costs and options such as HSA/FSA eligibility.
During the admissions process, you will be assigned a peer mentor along with the other members of your provider team. All of our peer mentors have personal experience recovering from an eating disorder, and receive specialized mentorship training from Equip.
While you won’t be able to choose your peer mentor, we do our best to match patients with mentors who have similar lived experience. We encourage you to meet with your mentor to get to know them as well as their background and expertise, and to share with them your goals for treatment and peer mentor sessions. Some Equip families may meet with their mentors and find that they would like to connect with someone else, in which case our Patient Experience team is available to assist you.
