What Doctors Can Do To Better Treat Eating Disorders

Diagnosing and treating an eating disorder is not easy. But a few small changes can help better equip medical professionals for the task.

In a HuffPost Live conversation on Tuesday, psychologist Ted Weltzin said the first step is to de-stigmatize the issue for medical students.

"What [researchers have] found is that medical students coming into training were stigmatized in terms of their views of people with eating disorders," he told host Caroline Modarressay-Tehrani. "Simply by allowing them to meet people with eating disorders and getting to know them personally, they developed a much more objective and professional viewpoint."

In addition to dealing with the shame surrounding eating disorders, it's also important for doctors to know when to ask for help with treatment, Weltzin explained.

"The other aspect that people need to understand is where to send people when they do find an eating disorder," he said. "So they should have a list of people to refer or specialty clinics or people in the community that they can send these people to."

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation about eating disorders here.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!