Teens outdoors on the Muir Wood campus during a day in the life at treatment

Comprehensive Mental Health Treatment for Teens Ages 12–17

Disordered eating in adolescents takes many forms: restrictive patterns, emotional eating, rigid food rules, body image distress, eating that’s become tied to anxiety or depression. For some teens, these patterns are an early warning that something deeper needs attention. For others, they have developed alongside an existing mental health picture — a teen managing depression or trauma whose relationship with food has become one more place the difficulty shows up.

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In-Network With Most Commercial Insurers

*Please note that at this time, we are not in network with Medicaid/Medi-Cal

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Clinically reviewed by

Dr. Ian Wolds Psy.D.

Last reviewed on July 16, 2026

When Disordered Eating Is Part of a Larger Clinical Picture

Muir Wood’s program is built for teens whose mental health has reached a point where weekly outpatient therapy isn’t enough — and whose disordered eating is part of that broader clinical picture rather than the primary diagnosis. Our work focuses on the underlying emotional and psychological conditions: trauma, depression, anxiety, self-harm, substance use, and the patterns of self-criticism and emotional dysregulation that often drive disordered eating in the first place. As those underlying conditions stabilize, the disordered eating patterns often begin to shift alongside them.

Teens outdoors at a nature-rich Muir Wood Teen Treatment residential campus in California

Our Healing Environment in California

Muir Wood’s residential campuses are set in serene, nature-rich environments across California — in Sonoma County, the Central Valley near Clovis, and Southern California’s Riverside area. Small, home-like residences, structured daily rhythms, balanced meals together, and distance from the specific triggers and patterns of home life give teens space to engage with treatment. Our gender-separate campuses reduce social distraction, and our multidisciplinary team provides 24/7 clinical support.

For teens whose disordered eating has been shaped by social media comparisons, peer pressure, family dynamics, or the relentless stress of adolescent life, the structured residential environment itself supports healing. Regular meals at regular times, eaten with peers in a non-judgmental setting, begin to interrupt the eating patterns that have built up at home.

What Muir Wood Does and Doesn’t Provide

Eating-related treatment is a broad area, and the appropriate level of care depends on the specific clinical picture. To help families find the right fit, here’s what Muir Wood’s scope of care includes and what falls outside it.

What we provide

Residential and intensive outpatient mental health treatment for teens ages 12–17
Evidence-based psychotherapy for depression, anxiety, trauma, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance use
Clinical work on the emotional patterns that often drive disordered eating — self-criticism, perfectionism, or needs for control, emotional dysregulation, body image distress, and the use of food behaviors as coping
Structured, balanced meals in a stable food environment, eaten together with peers and staff
Psychiatric evaluation and medication management for co-occurring mental health conditions, when clinically indicated
Family therapy, parent education, and ongoing family programming to support the home environment teens return to
Coordination with outpatient providers, including any dietitians or specialty eating disorder clinicians the teen is working with outside Muir Wood

What falls outside our scope

Primary specialty eating disorder treatment for teens whose primary diagnosis is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, ARFID, or binge eating disorder
Medical stabilization for teens experiencing severe restriction, refeeding risk, electrolyte instability, or other medical complications of an eating disorder
Dietitian-led nutritional rehabilitation, meal planning, calorie monitoring, or weight restoration protocols
Specialty eating disorder protocols such as formal Family-Based Treatment (FBT/Maudsley) or higher-acuity ED-specific behavioral monitoring

If you’re unsure whether Muir Wood is the right fit for your teen, please call our admissions team. We’d rather have an honest conversation about your teen’s clinical picture and help you find the right program than admit a teen whose needs would be better met somewhere else. When the fit isn’t right with us, we help families understand what level of care to look for and can offer guidance toward specialty providers in the eating disorder treatment community.

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Understanding Disordered Eating in Teens

Disordered Eating vs. Eating Disorders

The terms “disordered eating” and “eating disorder” are related but not the same. Eating disorders are specific clinical diagnoses defined in the DSM-5 — anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, and others — with specific criteria around behaviors, weight changes, medical complications, and psychological features. Disordered eating is a broader category describing patterns of eating, food-related thoughts, and body image distress that fall short of a formal eating disorder diagnosis but are clinically meaningful and often deeply affecting daily life.

Disordered eating exists on a spectrum. At one end, it might look like rigid food rules, occasional restriction, or anxiety around eating in front of others. At the other, it can begin shading toward the threshold of a clinical eating disorder. Where a particular teen sits on that spectrum is a clinical judgment, and that judgment shapes what kind of treatment is most appropriate.

Common Disordered Eating Patterns in Adolescents

Restrictive patterns: Skipping meals, calorie counting, cutting out food groups, eating significantly less than the body needs — often tied to a desire for control or to body image distress.
Emotional eating: Using food to soothe difficult emotions, eating in response to stress or sadness rather than hunger, or feeling unable to stop eating once started.
Rigid rules and rituals around food.: “Good” and “bad” food categories, anxiety when eating outside the rules, mealtime rituals that have to be performed in a specific way.
Body checking and body image distress: Frequent mirror-checking, weighing, comparing one’s body to others, persistent dissatisfaction or disgust with one’s body.
Compensatory behaviors: Excessive exercise to “offset” eating, using laxatives, or other behaviors intended to compensate for food intake.
Avoidant patterns: Avoiding eating with others, refusing certain textures or food categories beyond typical adolescent preference, or significant social withdrawal around mealtimes.

These patterns can develop in any teen. They are particularly common in teens who are also navigating depression, anxiety, trauma responses, social pressures, perfectionism, or substance use. The behaviors and the underlying mental health usually reinforce each other.

How Disordered Eating Affects Mental Health and Daily Life

Even when disordered eating doesn’t meet the threshold for a clinical eating disorder, it can take a real toll. The mental energy that goes into food rules, body monitoring, and managing eating-related anxiety is energy that isn’t available for school, friendships, or the developmental work of adolescence. Disordered eating is associated with elevated rates of depression, anxiety, social isolation, and self-harm. For teens whose disordered eating involves restriction, sleep, focus, mood regulation, and basic energy can all be affected by inadequate nutrition.

Disordered eating also rarely stays static. Without intervention, patterns tend to deepen over time, and what started as occasional restriction or emotional eating can develop into more significant behaviors. This is part of why we encourage families to take early signs seriously rather than waiting to see if things resolve on their own.

When Disordered Eating Requires Professional Mental Health Treatment

When Is It More Than Typical Adolescent Eating Variability?

Adolescent eating naturally varies. Teenagers go through phases of bigger and smaller appetites, sudden dietary preferences, growth-related fluctuations, and changing relationships with food and body. Not every period of unusual eating is a clinical concern. The line between typical adolescent variability and clinically meaningful disordered eating usually involves several of the following:

Patterns persist for weeks or months, not days
The teen experiences significant distress around food, weight, or body image
Eating patterns are interfering with daily life — school, social activities, energy, sleep, or family meals
Other mental health symptoms are present alongside the eating patterns — depression, anxiety, self-harm, substance use
The teen has tried to change the patterns and cannot
Family meals or food at home have become a source of regular conflict or distress

When several of these are present, a clinical assessment is warranted. The assessment helps determine what kind of treatment is most appropriate and at what level of intensity.

Warning Signs a Teen May Need Residential Treatment

Most teens with disordered eating patterns can be supported through outpatient therapy and family work. Residential treatment becomes the appropriate level of care when:

Outpatient therapy has not produced meaningful progress over an extended period
Co-occurring conditions — severe depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance use, trauma responses — are complicating the clinical picture
Daily functioning has deteriorated to the point that school attendance, basic self-care, or safe functioning at home is no longer sustainable
Family dynamics around food and eating have reached a level of conflict that requires concentrated work in a structured setting
Crisis-level mental health symptoms are present and require 24/7 supervision

Important: Residential treatment for disordered eating at Muir Wood is appropriate when the broader mental health picture warrants residential care. For teens whose eating disorder behaviors themselves require medical stabilization, intensive nutritional rehabilitation, or specialty ED protocols, a primary eating disorder treatment program is usually the better fit. Our admissions team can help families think through which level and type of care matches their teen’s needs.

Disordered Eating and Co-Occurring Mental Health Conditions

For most teens we treat, disordered eating doesn’t exist in isolation. Common co-occurring conditions include:

Depression: Often closely intertwined with disordered eating — either feeding the patterns or feeding off them.

Anxiety: Generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and OCD-spectrum patterns frequently overlap with rigid food rules and body checking.

Trauma: A history of trauma, particularly involving the body, often shapes eating and body-related distress in adolescence.

Self-harm and suicidal ideation: Disordered eating and other self-harming behaviors often occur together.

Substance use: Substances may be used to manage emotional weight or to suppress appetite.

Perfectionism and high-pressure environments: Academic pressure, athletics, and social comparison often play a role in how disordered eating develops.

Our integrated treatment model addresses these conditions together rather than as separate tracks. Working on the underlying mental health is, for many teens, what creates the conditions for the disordered eating patterns to begin shifting.

Our Evidence-Based Approach to Treatment

Treatment at Muir Wood is built around evidence-based modalities adapted to the developmental needs of adolescents. For teens whose disordered eating is part of a broader mental health picture, the clinical work focuses on the underlying conditions — depression, anxiety, trauma, substance use — while also providing the structured environment and emotional support that begins to interrupt the eating-related patterns.

Individual Therapy

Each teen receives at least two individual sessions per week in residential care, led by our team of therapists and recovery counselors. The therapeutic relationship is the foundation of treatment — a space where teens can speak honestly about the experiences, thoughts, and patterns that have shaped their relationship with food and body. For teens with disordered eating, individual therapy is often where the most personal material gets processed: body image, family dynamics around food, perfectionism, the emotional functions food behaviors are serving.

Group Therapy

Group therapy gives teens an experience individual sessions cannot — the recognition that other teens are working through similar challenges. For teens with disordered eating, hearing peers describe similar struggles with body image, food rules, or emotional eating reduces the shame and isolation these patterns almost always carry. Our groups are led by experienced adolescent clinicians and intentionally sized to be supportive rather than overwhelming.

Psychiatric Evaluation and Medication Management

Some teens benefit from psychiatric medication for co-occurring depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions. At Muir Wood, our psychiatric team follows a non-ideological, least-necessary approach: medication is used only when clinically indicated, always in combination with therapy, and always in close collaboration with families. Medication is not used to treat the disordered eating itself — it’s used, when appropriate, to address the co-occurring mental health conditions that may be feeding the eating patterns.

Trauma-Informed Mental Health Care

Many teens with disordered eating have a trauma history. The relationship between trauma and disordered eating is well documented — eating behaviors often develop as ways to manage overwhelming emotional experiences or to create a sense of control after experiences in which control was lost. Our trauma-informed approach treats these patterns as protective rather than pathological, even as we help teens build better tools.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is one of the foundational evidence-based approaches we use, particularly for the cognitive and behavioral patterns that drive disordered eating — black-and-white thinking about food and body, perfectionism, the cognitive distortions that fuel body image distress, and the behavioral patterns of restriction, rule-following, or emotional eating. CBT is integrated into individual therapy and group programming throughout treatment.

Family Therapy and Parent Support

Family therapy, conducted weekly by your teen’s primary therapist, addresses the specific dynamics at play in your family — including how meals are handled at home, how body and food are talked about (or avoided), and how parents can support a teen’s recovery without becoming the food police. This work is not about assigning blame. It’s about giving families clearer ways of being with each other around what has often become a fraught area of family life.

Twice-weekly parent education classes and a weekly parent support group provide additional spaces for parents to learn, connect with peers, and process their own experience. By the time your teen returns home, both you and your teen will have built skills on parallel tracks — your teen through their individualized clinical work, you through family therapy, education, and peer support.

Programs & Locations

With beautiful campuses across California, we offer residential treatment and intensive outpatient programs in Petaluma and Penngrove in Sonoma County, Clovis in the Central Valley, and the historic Orange Grove District of Riverside County.

Residential Treatment

For adolescents with primary mental health and co-occurring substance use needs, days are structured around therapy, education, and restorative outdoor experiences. Evenings in supportive, home-like residences allow teens to reset and integrate what they're learning—building consistency and trust across the entire treatment experience.

Residential Treatment Program

Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)

An after-school program offered 3–4 days per week in Petaluma and Clovis for teens with primary mental health needs or dual diagnosis. Designed for those stepping down from residential treatment or stepping up from weekly outpatient therapy, it includes group therapy, weekly individual sessions, and family involvement to support stability at home, in school, and in daily life.

Intensive Outpatient Program

An interior space at a Muir Wood Teen Treatment residential campus

Our Continuum of Care

We believe strong outcomes depend on continuity and collaboration. From admission through discharge, we coordinate closely with your teen’s existing providers and aftercare programs — whether that’s our IOP or another trusted outpatient partner. Our team stays in regular communication with the broader care network to support timely transitions, shared understanding, and a clear path forward.

For teens whose families are also working with outside dietitians or specialty eating disorder clinicians, we coordinate with those providers as part of the broader treatment picture. Care that crosses programs is most effective when the providers are talking to each other, not when each works in isolation.

The Muir Wood Teen Difference

Our team partners closely with parents from day one with clear updates, a personalized plan, and real-world tools you can use between sessions, so your teen can move toward stability and lasting wellness alongside peers facing similar challenges.

Specialists in Adolescent Care

Everything we do is built for teens ages 12 to 17. Board-certified clinicians who focus exclusively on adolescent mental health and substance use deliver evidence-based, developmentally appropriate care.

Community and Connection

Therapist-led groups and daily peer interaction help teens feel understood. Connection with others facing similar challenges becomes a core part of the recovery process.

Primary Mental Health Plus Substance Use

Our trauma-informed approach treats substance use and the mental health conditions underneath it together, so teens heal deeply rather than trading one struggle for another.

Support for the Whole Family

Healing happens together. Families stay involved through therapy, education, and a 16-week aftercare coaching program that builds trust and stability long after treatment ends.

Care Covered by Insurance

We partner with most major insurers to remove financial barriers, so families can access high-quality, evidence-based treatment when it matters most.

Stay in School While Getting Support

Through our WASC-accredited academic program, students keep learning with personalized support, so treatment does not mean falling behind.

Continuum of Care

When a program is complete, we coordinate a thoughtful transition, collaborating with outpatient therapists, schools, and community providers to sustain progress.

Speak With a Teen Treatment Specialist

Connect with our admissions team today to learn how Muir Wood can support your family.

Call: 866-705-0828 Get Started

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Muir Wood treat eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia?

Muir Wood is not a primary specialty eating disorder treatment program. We treat teens whose disordered eating patterns are part of a broader mental health picture — depression, anxiety, trauma, self-harm, substance use — and whose level of care needs are mental health rather than primarily medical or nutritional. For teens whose primary diagnosis is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, ARFID, or binge eating disorder, and whose treatment needs include medical stabilization, weight restoration, or specialty ED protocols, a dedicated eating disorder treatment program is usually the better fit. If you’re unsure where your teen falls, please call our admissions team — we’d rather have an honest conversation about your teen’s clinical picture than admit a teen whose needs would be better met somewhere else.

Will my teen receive nutritional counseling at Muir Wood?

Muir Wood does not provide specialty nutritional therapy, such as calorie monitoring, weight-restoration protocols, or dietitian-led meal planning, as part of an eating disorder treatment protocol. What we do provide is structured, balanced meals — menus are dietitian-approved — at consistent times, eaten together with peers and staff in a supportive environment, alongside basic wellness education that’s part of our overall programming. Dietitian access is available when clinically indicated. For teens working with an outside dietitian or specialty eating disorder clinician, we coordinate with those providers as part of the broader treatment picture. If your teen’s clinical picture requires intensive nutritional rehabilitation, that’s a service better provided by a primary eating disorder treatment program.

How does Muir Wood address co-occurring mental health concerns?

Through an integrated clinical model. For most teens we treat, disordered eating is part of a broader mental health picture that includes depression, anxiety, trauma, self-harm, or substance use. Our work is on the full picture — addressed through one integrated treatment plan, not separate tracks. Working on the underlying mental health is, for many teens, what creates the conditions for the disordered eating patterns to begin shifting.

What if my teen also struggles with substance use?

Disordered eating and substance use frequently co-occur in adolescents. Muir Wood specializes in treating both primary mental health and co-occurring substance use, and our program is built to address them together. Teens whose clinical picture includes substance use alongside disordered eating receive integrated care that addresses both — not as separate problems to be solved sequentially, but as connected pieces of one clinical picture.

How long is the treatment program?

Residential treatment at Muir Wood typically ranges from 45 to 60 days, with some stays extending to 90 days. The exact length is determined by clinical progress and insurance authorization rather than a fixed formula. IOP varies based on the teen’s level of care needs and progress. The 16-week aftercare coaching program follows discharge to support the transition home. Length-of-stay decisions are made collaboratively with families and reviewed regularly throughout treatment.

How are families involved in treatment?

Family involvement is central to how we work. Standard family programming at Muir Wood includes weekly family therapy with your teen’s primary therapist, twice-weekly parent education classes, a weekly parent support group, regular treatment team huddle calls, and a 16-week aftercare coaching program. For families navigating disordered eating specifically, the family work often includes support around mealtime dynamics, body and food language at home, and how parents can support recovery without becoming the food police.

Does insurance cover this treatment?

Mental health treatment for teens — including teens whose clinical picture involves disordered eating alongside depression, anxiety, trauma, or substance use — is typically a covered benefit under most major commercial insurance plans when the teen meets clinical medical-necessity criteria. Muir Wood is in-network with most major commercial insurance plans, including Kaiser, Anthem, Blue Shield of California, Aetna, Cigna, Optum, United Healthcare, TRICARE, and others. Our admissions team verifies benefits directly with your carrier and walks you through coverage, prior authorization, and out-of-pocket responsibility before you make any decisions. Muir Wood is not in-network with Medicaid or Medi-Cal.

Muir Wood Treatment Center Reviews

Read about Muir Wood experiences from a parent who has been through it. Read these and other reviews from real parents of Muir Wood alumni. If you would like to speak to an alumni parent, contact us and we’ll arrange it.

Staff is exceptional and the care for the kids is incredible.

CG

Jul 2026
Haley really got to know Damian and identified several of the areas that contributed to Damian's challenges, particularly in how they are neuro-divergent. This was a huge help and something we hadn't gotten before.

CL

Jul 2026
Muir Wood planted to the seeds for my sobriety. Thankful for the loving staff and supportive community - celebrating 3 years sober in February!

JD

Jul 2026
I feel like the program is comprehensive and my son got good care while he was here, especially compared to other facilities.

JP

Jul 2026
All staff are kind and genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of our son. We felt our son was safe and in a place that would facilitate his growth. We are eternally grateful for you. Thank you.

Kind staff kept our son safe and growing

Jul 2026
Helped our son understand about drugs

FL

Jul 2026
Muirwood has a very structured environment and great communication between facility and parents as well as parent support groups.

DC

Jul 2026
Muir Woods has been able to get deeper into Leela’s mental health than any other facility

KK

Jul 2026

Accreditations

*Please note that at this time, we are not in network with Medicaid/Medi-Cal

Get Support for Your Teen Today

Talk with our admissions team about how Muir Wood can help your family take the next step.

866-705-0828 Get Started