Skip to main content

Harborside Psych

New Clients
Contact us
(508) 876-3448

Eating Disorder Treatment for Somerville, MA

Everyone on the Harborside clinical team has an extensive background in treating eating disorders and the conditions that tend to travel alongside them, which means you get informed care for a genuinely complex set of challenges rather than a generalist’s best guess. That matters if you live in Somerville, where a lot of our patients are graduate students, researchers, and professionals who have already read the studies, already tried the workbook, and want a clinician who can keep up with a detailed question rather than deflect it. You are not looking for reassurance alone. You want to understand the reasoning behind a diagnosis, a medication, or a treatment plan, and you want to be spoken to as someone capable of holding that information.

This page explains how eating disorder care works at Harborside, who provides it, and what to expect if you decide to call.

Find a Clinician

Eating Disorder Treatment for people in Somerville, MA

Harborside Psychiatrics is based at 411 Main St in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, and delivers care by video to patients across the state, including Somerville. You do not travel to an office. Appointments happen over a secure video platform from wherever you have a private space and a stable internet connection: a laptop, tablet, or smartphone with a camera and microphone is all that is required.

An initial evaluation typically runs longer than a follow-up, giving your clinician time to understand your eating history, medical background, and any co-occurring concerns before building a plan with you. Follow-up appointments for medication management are shorter and happen on a schedule set with your prescriber, often more frequently early in care and spacing out as things stabilize. If medication is part of your plan, prescriptions are sent electronically to the pharmacy of your choice in Somerville or anywhere else in Massachusetts, so you are not driving anywhere to pick up a paper script.

Therapy sessions run on a separate track from medication appointments, and many patients see both a prescriber and a therapist as part of coordinated care. The two clinicians communicate with each other, with your consent, so you are not repeating your history twice.

pexels-karolina-grabowska

How telehealth care actually works

Eating disorders rarely show up on their own. Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder often occur alongside anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive patterns, trauma history, or difficulty regulating attention. Some patients come in with a formal diagnosis already in hand. Others come in only knowing that their relationship with food, exercise, or body image has become difficult to manage on their own, without a name for it yet.

Care at Harborside is built around the whole picture, not just the eating behavior in isolation. That means your clinician is also paying attention to sleep, mood, anxiety, substance use, and any medical complications that can come with disordered eating, because treating one piece without the others tends not to hold.

What we treat

Your first appointment is an evaluation, not a commitment to a specific treatment path. Your clinician will ask about your eating and exercise patterns, your medical and psychiatric history, current medications, and what has or has not helped before. If medication is a reasonable option, you will talk through what that could look like, including timelines and what to watch for. If therapy is the better starting point, or both are appropriate at once, that gets mapped out together. You leave the first appointment with a plan, not a list of unanswered questions.

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 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 often comes with eating disorders. Full bios and credentials for each of them are on the team page.

Therapy and eating disorder-focused 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 some patients find useful when talk-based approaches alone have not captured the full picture. Between the prescribers and the therapy team, patients in Somerville have access to coordinated medication and therapy care under one practice.

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 any questions about cost can be answered before you book anything.

What it costs

If you are ready to schedule, or you want to ask a question first, reaching out is the next step. You can review the eating disorder treatment service page for more detail on how the practice approaches this work generally, or the Massachusetts telehealth page for how care is delivered statewide, including for patients in the Inner Metro area around Somerville. If anxiety is part of what you are dealing with alongside disordered eating, the anxiety treatment page covers that piece in more depth.

Getting started

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

This page is educational and is not medical advice. Reading it does not create a provider-patient relationship with Harborside Psychiatrics or any of its clinicians. [CITATION: National Institute of Mental Health or NEDA overview of eating disorders, for general condition information]

Reviewed by Lexie Carchedi, LCSW. Last reviewed: {LAST_REVIEWED}.

Contact Us

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.

Contact Us