Interview “Fundación Nuevo Rumbo”

During the last couple of weeks, I have really tried to reach out to different organizations that help with eating disorders and body image, specifically in Latin America, which I want to be my main focus of study. I was able to get in contact with this organization in Argentina called the “Fundación Nuevo Rumbo.” They were very quick to respond. I did not have time to obtain written consent, but I received verbal consent from Mauro, the person I spoke with, about using what they explained in our conversation for my blog. I am still in contact with them and plan to have a more formal conversation. The first thing that he explained to me is that this is not necessarily an eating disorder clinic. Still, it is a rehab center for different kinds of addiction; this includes alcohol and drugs, but they also treat people who have problems with food on a lot of sides of the spectrum. Something I have noticed is that a lot of places, specifically in Latin America, have this included in their form of eating disorders as addictions. They are treated the same way in centers such as this, which I find a hard approach because everyone is treated the same or lumped together when their issues might be very unique. I think this is a gap in Latin America, since many countries use the same system, and in Europe there are more specialized clinics. One of the most important things that he talks about is that they are not an organization that does outreach; they are a treatment center. They start by giving patients a structured program, which means they have specific hours when they are expected to eat, as well as the type of food, to help them decentralize and do it themselves; they take away that choice to give them more order. Then they start to integrate different forms of motivation to get them to want to get better and improve their health. Secondly, they want the family to be involved and to be part of the motivation for them to get better because they are trying, through different forms of therapy, to get the people who are part of their program involved; there is a lot of family therapy. They are instrumental to the recovery of the individual. Later on, after they have taken part in the program with different professionals such as psychodrama treatments, psychiatrists, therapists, and many more experts in the field to try to deal with the root of the issue, which is their goal, what they do is that they take the steps to reintegrate them into regular society. What they want to do through this entire process is to get to the root of the limiting thoughts that cause addictive behaviors in whatever shape or form they come in. They also look a lot at the issues surrounding social stigma because people feel very embarrassed that they have issues such as this one and that they do not know how to handle them. After all, their entire lives they have been told that they need to keep it together and that nobody can find out. One of the other things I asked them about is the difficulties that they face as an organization. They are a private foundation, which means that they run as a business; they do not get any funding from the state. They find that the greatest difficulty they have is paperwork and bureaucracy because sometimes people need treatment and at that exact moment, not later on. Bureaucracy gets in the way and makes things take longer than they should, but this is a greater issue.