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Eating Disorder Treatment for Reading, MA

Everyone on the Harborside team brings an extensive background in treating eating disorders and the conditions that tend to travel alongside them, which means the person on your screen already understands how anxiety, mood, and body image can be tangled together before you finish explaining it. That matters in a town like Reading, where a lot of households are running on a tight schedule between commuter rail timetables, school pickups, and jobs in Boston that do not leave room for guesswork. If you are trying to figure out whether an eating disorder is something you can address in a 45-minute video appointment squeezed between meetings, this page walks through how that actually works.

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Eating Disorder Treatment for people in Reading, MA

Harborside Psychiatrics is based in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, and delivers care to patients across the state by video. You do not travel to an office. You need a private space, a stable internet connection, and a phone, tablet, or computer with a camera. That is the whole technical setup.

A first appointment typically runs longer than a follow-up, giving the clinician time to understand your history, your current eating patterns, and any related concerns like anxiety, depression, or past medical complications. Follow-up sessions are shorter and scheduled at a pace that fits the clinical picture, whether that means weekly therapy, medication management every few weeks, or some combination of both. If a prescription is part of your care, it is sent electronically to the pharmacy near you in Reading or wherever is most convenient, the same way it would be from an in-person practice.

Video visits also mean scheduling around an actual workday instead of around drive time. A lunchtime appointment or one after the kids are off to school is often realistic in a way it would not be if it required getting to and from an in-person office.

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How telehealth care actually works

Eating disorder treatment at Harborside covers a range of presentations, including restrictive eating, binge eating, patterns of bingeing and purging, and the anxious or compulsive thinking about food, weight, and body image that does not always fit neatly into a diagnostic label. Eating disorders rarely show up alone. It is common to also see anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive patterns, trauma history, or difficulty regulating emotion sitting underneath or alongside the eating behavior. Because the clinical team is used to seeing these conditions together, care is built to address the whole picture rather than treating the eating disorder in isolation and leaving the rest unaddressed.

What we treat

The first appointment is a conversation, not a checklist. Expect questions about your eating patterns, your relationship with food and your body over time, your physical and mental health history, and what has or has not been tried before. If medication management is being considered, the clinician will also review current and past medications and any relevant medical history. By the end of the appointment, you should have a working sense of what treatment could look like: whether that is therapy, medication management, or both, and roughly how often you would be seen going forward.

What the first appointment involves

Medication management and functional psychiatry at Harborside are performed by psychiatric nurse practitioners: Rachel Egan, RN PMHNP-BC, who is also the practice’s clinical director, Emily Pardue, RN PMHNP-BC, and Kirstin Ritchie, RN PMHNP-BC. Each is qualified to evaluate, diagnose, and prescribe for mental health conditions, including the medical and psychiatric complexity that can come with an eating disorder. Full bios and credentials for each of them are on the team page.

Therapy and eating disorder-specific clinical work are delivered by the licensed therapy team: Hannah Legesse, LICSW, Tori Mahoney, LMHC, Jacquelyn Duford, LCMHC ATR, and Lexie Carchedi, LCSW. Jacquelyn is also a registered art therapist, which can be a useful additional approach for patients who find it hard to talk about body image and food directly through conversation alone. Together, this group is uniquely suited to the layered nature of eating disorder care, where medical, emotional, and behavioral pieces all need attention at once.

Who our clinicians are

Harborside is a private-pay practice and does not bill insurance directly for appointments. Current fees for an initial appointment and for follow-up visits are listed on the pricing page, and questions about cost can be answered before anything is booked.

What it costs

If you are in Reading and trying to decide whether to reach out, you do not need to have a diagnosis figured out first. A first appointment is where that gets sorted out together with a clinician who already has depth in this area. You can review the full eating disorder treatment service page, learn more about care across the state on the Massachusetts telehealth page, or see how Harborside works with patients throughout the Inner Metro North region. If anxiety is part of what you are dealing with alongside eating concerns, the anxiety treatment page may also be useful.

Getting started

This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and reading it does not create a provider-patient relationship with Harborside Psychiatrics.

If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For mental health crisis support, call or text 988. Harborside Psychiatrics does not provide emergency or after-hours care.

For general guidance on eating disorders and when to seek care, the National Institute of Mental Health publishes patient-facing information [CITATION: NIMH eating disorders overview page, for general public health context].

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does Harborside treat eating disorders that haven't been formally diagnosed?

Yes. Many clients start therapy for a difficult relationship with food or body image before, or without, a formal diagnosis.

Yes, when a client is already working with one. Coordination is discussed during intake and ongoing treatment.

No. Eating disorder therapy at Harborside is talk therapy. Medical monitoring, lab work, and meal planning are handled by outside providers and coordinated with as needed.

Clients who want medication management can be connected with one of Harborside’s psychiatric nurse practitioners.

No. Outpatient therapy isn’t appropriate for every situation. If a higher level of care is needed, your therapist will discuss that directly rather than continuing with weekly sessions alone.

Currently, eating disorder treatment at Harborside is available to clients located in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

If you need help right now

If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For mental health crisis support, call or text 988. Harborside Psychiatrics does not provide emergency or after-hours care.

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