Dr. O'Toole's Blog

Expensive, failed Treatment

Mar 16 2010 - 10:21am

I can’t keep quiet about it. All over this country we are talking about the outrageous cost of medical care, trying to tease out the reasons medical care seems to be more expensive in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world. I am sure there is not “one answer” or “one reason” for these escalating costs, but rather many reasons across all fields of medicine. So let me confine my comments to my field: eating disorders.

Hope at the end of the tunnel

Feb 4 2010 - 6:45pm

That light we can see at the end of this long, dim tunnel is the lantern of hope. Sound corny? It wouldn’t if you had been afraid to go to sleep at night for fear that your eating disordered child would stop breathing….

Beware the class on health and fitness

Jan 15 2010 - 4:16pm

Although most of us would agree that classes on health and fitness can be fun and informative for many kids, they can be stressful for some and positively destructive for others.

Silent night from the Blogosphere

Jan 5 2010 - 5:11pm

I have been silent here on my blog over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, traditionally a hard time for our patients.

Christmas and Hanukkah, with all of the candies and sweets and comments about weight and failed diets, can be a challenge for our patients—although I have been impressed with how calm it was this year.

Hypnosis at the Kartini Clinic

Dec 21 2009 - 6:33pm

Dear Readers,

Rethinking Treatment of Food Phobia and Fear of Swallowing in Children

Nov 23 2009 - 3:42pm

My team shudders to hear it: “I’ve got an idea…” “I wonder what would happen if…” since those words are usually the prelude to me revamping one of our programs and “messing with a good thing”.

Dr. William Connors: In Memoriam

Nov 9 2009 - 12:33pm

Family Dinners: the Sports Connection

Nov 1 2009 - 12:32pm

I gave a talk a few nights ago at Catlin Gabel School, a private school in Portland Oregon. We spent a long time afterwards just talking with the school counselors and one coach about the effect of sports on family dinners.

Family Dinner

Oct 20 2009 - 11:33am

It’s 1959, a mild day in California and we kids are playing outside. There are four of us and four of our friends, we range all over the neighborhood and small community park without concern for our safety. We laugh, we shout, we quarrel, we play. And then it’s over: “Kids! Time to come home….dinner’s ready”. Up and down the block mothers were calling their children indoors. It was time for dinner in America and pretty much everyone stopped what they were doing and ate. Together.

Weighing our children

Sep 29 2009 - 5:22pm

At the Kartini Clinic we tell our parents (over and over again) “Please don’t let anyone one, even another doctor’s office, weigh your child while they are in treatment here.”

Why not? Well let me tell you why not:

I walked into the exam room to see my patient, a young boy who had had a very rocky road to remission. He was barely stable physically and just had one toe in psychological recovery. He had struggled.

“I had a bad week” he told me in a quiet, shamed voice, “I had a melt-down in my pediatrician’s office. I cried. I yelled.”

“Why was that?”