BridgePoint Center for Eating Disorders

Our Story
What started out as a pilot project in 1997 has turned into an innovative eating disorder program that has gained attention at a national level and has positively impacted thousands of lives. Saskatchewan residents are truly fortunate to be able to access holistic residential programming for disordered eating – including bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder, and eating disorders not otherwise specified.

BridgePoint Center for Eating Disorders is a provincial resource that provides program options that include recovery and healing for people who are experiencing eating disorders. We are a non-profit provincially approved facility that works in partnership with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. We are a residential program where participants stay in the community at our facility for the duration of their program. There are 8 single rooms available, with 24/7 support.

Holistic Healing
BridgePoint focuses on an alternative approach to healing—focusing on many areas of a person’s life. We incorporate different exercises throughout our programming that focus on mind, body, and spirit. At BridgePoint, we do not use the phrase “fixing” people because we do not believe they are broken. We believe that the participants have the answers within themselves and that they are stronger than they believe. This strength is what will help them get through this journey. BridgePoint is not a “cure” for disordered eating because we understand recovery is a process and it will take time. We are often asked our success rate and it is not possible to give a definitive answer because success is hard to define. For example, for one person success might be getting rid of their disordered eating behaviors but the thoughts are still occurring. Success to another individual may mean purging less. We have seen success in forms such as support, resiliency, courage, strength and hope.

We view eating disorders as a type of coping mechanism. We look into what is driving the behaviour of disordered eating. We believe it is not beneficial to only treat the symptoms or behaviours. It is essential to look at why someone is using these types of behaviours. We believe individuals use food in some way (eating too much, not eating enough) to cope with an internal struggle. At BridgePoint, we focus on these internal reasons which we have seen as previous trauma in their life, such as different forms of abuse or loss of loved ones. It could also be perfectionism, being high achievers, parental expectations or other areas of concern. By working through these struggles and focusing on developing healthy tools and skills to cope, rather than focusing solely on the food or solely on the behaviours, these individuals can start living their lives differently and in turn their behaviours can diminish over time and may eventually disappear because they are no longer needed.