4 Design Strategies For Treatment Spaces For Persons With Eating Disorders

September 11, 2023

ERC is featured in this healthcare design magazine for its design strategies to provide a calming environment in treatment spaces including the spa areas. The article notes ERC provides calm and safe bathroom spaces; reduced social density in dining areas; uses natural lighting throughout for circadian health; and reduces opportunities for excess movement.

The complexity of eating disorders and treatment translates downstream into complex challenges in the design of these care spaces. The waiting list for persons with eating disorders to be admitted for treatment is long.

Eating Recovery Center (ERC; Denver, Colo.), which operates 35 care centers across the country, delivers specialized, multidisciplinary inpatient and outpatient treatment for adults, children, and adolescents of all genders, including the medical, psychiatric, psychological, and behavioral aspects of the illness. In 2008, Boulder Associates (Boulder, Colo.) began partnering with ERC on its first 12-bed unit, and since have designed most of ERC’s care centers.

To date, most ERC projects have been renovations and tenant improvements of existing buildings to minimize construction time so as not to delay treatment to patients urgently needing care. ERC’s inpatient and residential units typically have an equal mix of adult and adolescent 18-bed units in three-story buildings that range in size from 100,000 to 125,000 square feet.

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