We treat the anxiety, depression, and trauma that so often drive disordered eating, through clinician-owned partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs in Austin.
Our specialty program
Specialty treatment for eating disorders through Empowered Treatment
Lucent is proud to offer comprehensive eating disorder treatment through our specialty program Empowered.
Empowered Treatment offers a full continuum of outpatient care including PHP and IOP for individuals struggling with a variety of disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder (BED), OSFED, and ARFID.
The basics
What is an eating disorder
Eating disorders are serious mental and physical health conditions that affect how a person relates to food, body, emotion, control, and safety [1]. They are not a lifestyle choice, and they affect people of every gender, body size, age, and background. Appearance reveals nothing about whether someone has one [2].
Through our specialty program Empowered Treatment, we treat five recognized conditions
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Anorexia nervosa
Restriction of food intake and intense fear of weight gain. Atypical anorexia, which meets every criterion except low body weight, is actually the most common presentation. [2]
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Bulimia nervosa
Cycles of binge eating followed by compensatory behavior like purging, laxative misuse, or compulsive exercise. Most people with bulimia maintain an average or larger body size, which is part of why it is so often missed. [3]
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Binge eating disorder (BED)
Recurring episodes of eating that feel out of control, followed by shame. It is the second most common eating disorder diagnosis, and dieting intensifies it rather than resolving it. [4][5]
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OSFED
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder. One of the most common eating disorder diagnoses, covering presentations like atypical anorexia, subthreshold bulimia or BED, purging disorder, and night eating syndrome. It carries medical risks, including hospitalization and mortality risk, comparable to the named diagnoses, not lesser ones. [6][7]
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ARFID
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Avoiding or restricting food to a degree that harms nutrition or daily life, driven by sensory sensitivity, fear of consequences like choking, or low interest in eating rather than body-image concerns. [8]
Levels of care
What treatment at Empowered looks like
Empowered offers both a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) and an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) designed specifically to treat eating disorders and their underlying causes.
Partial hospitalization
PHP
Intensive outpatient
IOP
Both programs include
- Group therapy
- Daily process groups
- Regular individual therapy
- Nutrition counseling and food groups led by registered dietitians
- Supported meals with clinical staff
- Psychiatric care
- Family support
- Yoga and somatic work
- Real world experiential outings including grocery shopping and dining out
| Intensive outpatientIOP | Partial hospitalizationPHP | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly commitment | 9 to 15 hours, spread across several days a week | 20 to 30 hours. Programming runs 5 days a week, typically 5 hours a day |
| Schedule options | Daytime and evening tracks | A single structured daytime schedule |
| Curriculum length | 12 weeks, on both tracks | Set clinically rather than fixed, and reviewed as you go |
| Work, school, caregiving | Built around them. Both tracks exist so treatment fits a working week rather than replacing it | Generally not compatible with full-time work or school |
| Daily monitoring | Structure across the week, with time between program days to practice skills independently | Daily clinical monitoring, with shorter gaps between interventions |
| Medical oversight | Psychiatric evaluation and medication management provided in house, integrated with therapy | Overseen by the Medical Director and a board-certified psychiatrist. Psychiatric stabilization is a core component, not an add-on |
| Primary therapist | Master's-level licensed clinicians (LPC, LCSW, LMFT) | Every client is assigned a master's-level primary therapist (LCSW, LPC, or LMFT) |
| Core modalities | ACT, DBT skills, Internal Family Systems, polyvagal-informed therapy, CBT, mindfulness, trauma-focused techniques | DBT, Internal Family Systems, polyvagal-informed regulation, specialty therapies, and trauma work including EMDR, Brainspotting, and Accelerated Resolution Therapy |
| Experiential work | Yoga therapy, art, journaling, mindfulness, nutrition and fitness coaching | Sound baths, cold plunges, nature hikes, yoga and movement therapy, sensory experiences, psychodrama, somatic experiencing |
| Often the right fit when | Symptoms stay relatively stable between program days, daily responsibilities remain manageable, and coping strategies can be practiced on your own | Mood shifts are rapid or unpredictable, regulation deteriorates quickly between days, you are stepping down from inpatient or residential care, or IOP-level structure has not been enough |
| Support around the program | Case management, collaborative aftercare planning, and a step-down into the Transitional Program | Transitional housing for men and women, mental health coaching, and case management |
Not sure which one fits? That is what an assessment is for. We also compare the two levels in more detail in our guide to IOP vs PHP.
Our approach
How Empowered approaches eating disorder treatment in Austin, TX
Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions. They are not choices, moral failings, or problems of willpower [9].
And for most people, the behaviors that show up around food are connected to something deeper: emotional pain, trauma, anxiety, attachment wounds, or a nervous system that has learned it is not safe.
Treating the cause alongside the symptoms
That is why care at Empowered goes beyond symptom management. The program works to heal not only behaviors around food, but also the underlying emotional, cognitive, relational, and nervous system patterns that establish and maintain those behaviors [9].
When the cause is treated alongside the symptoms, people begin to recover.
This belief shapes everything: the program, the team, the trauma-integrated approach, and even the way the space feels when you walk in.
For families
What families can expect
If you are reading this about someone you love, a few things are worth knowing.
01
Involvement is not supervision
Family involvement improves outcomes, which is why family-based treatment has the evidence base it does. But involvement is not the same as supervision, and the most useful thing you can do is often not the most intuitive one.
02
Why comments about food backfire
Conversations about food, weight, and appearance, even encouraging ones, tend to reinforce the framework the eating disorder already runs on.
03
Setbacks are not failure
Recovery is also rarely linear. Setbacks are common and are not evidence that treatment has failed or that your person is not trying. Families who understand this in advance tend to weather it better than families who are blindsided by it.
The Family Support team at Empowered Treatment guides each of our families throughout the entire treatment process. Their skilled clinicians will help you do everything possible to support your loved one's recovery while also maintaining appropriate boundaries and taking care of yourself in the process.
Our What to Expect for Families page covers how we communicate with families and what involvement looks like in practice.
What we want to correct
Eating disorders do not have a single look
Often times eating disorders are misunderstood or not taken as seriously as they should be. A substantial number of the people we talk with have already been dismissed once, by a doctor, a family member, or their own sense that they are not sick enough to take up space in a program. You cannot tell by looking at someone whether they have an eating disorder [2].
Common misconceptions include
-
01 Myth
Anorexia
Is not a choice or vanity. It is a serious mental illness with real genetic and biological factors, and people do not simply outgrow it without specialized treatment. [2]
-
02 Myth
Bulimia
Normal weight does not mean someone is fine. Most people with bulimia maintain an unremarkable weight, and the binge-purge cycle is biologically and psychologically self-reinforcing, not a matter of self-control. [3]
-
03 Myth
Binge eating disorder
Is not everyone overeats sometimes. It involves recurring loss-of-control episodes that cause real suffering, affects people across the entire weight spectrum, and stricter dieting makes it worse. [4]
-
04 Myth
OSFED
Is not a mild version of an eating disorder. Research shows adolescents with OSFED are hospitalized at similar rates to anorexia nervosa, and roughly a third of eating-disorder deaths in one study were associated with OSFED specifically, a higher share than any other single diagnosis. [6][7]
-
05 Myth
ARFID
Is not picky eating and is not only a childhood condition. Adults have it too, and unlike anorexia, body image is not the driver. [8]
You do not have to meet a threshold of visible suffering to deserve care.
What the research shows
Most people who need this care never receive it
In May 2026, JAMA Psychiatry published a meta-analysis of 36 randomized clinical trials examining digitally delivered eating disorder interventions [10]. The researchers, led by a team at Deakin University with collaborators at the Karolinska Institutet, found moderate improvements in core eating disorder symptoms, with weaker but still statistically significant gains sustained at follow-up. That is genuinely encouraging, but the reason that study exists at all is worth sitting with: researchers are testing app-based and web-based delivery because the conventional system is not reaching most people who need it.
JAMA PsychiatryAnderson et al., May 13, 2026. Meta-analysis of 36 randomized trials.
The scale of that gap is well documented. National figures on eating disorder treatment published by the National Institute of Mental Health show that roughly a third of adults with anorexia nervosa, and just over 43 percent of adults with bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder, have ever sought treatment specifically for their eating disorder [11]. Those come from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, the most recent nationally representative diagnostic-interview data NIMH publishes, though the survey itself was fielded in the early 2000s. Most people either never ask for help, or ask for help with something adjacent and never name the thing itself.
NIMHNational Comorbidity Survey Replication, fielded 2001 to 2003. Diagnostic interview data.
The treatment gap
For every ten adults with anorexia nervosa, about three have ever sought treatment specifically for it.
3
of 10
Sought treatmentDid not
A report produced by Deloitte Access Economics for Harvard's Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders and the Academy for Eating Disorders estimated that eating disorders carry about $64.7 billion in annual financial costs in the United States, roughly three-quarters of it attributable to lost productivity, plus an additional $326.5 billion in lost wellbeing. The same report estimated that 28.8 million Americans will experience an eating disorder at some point in their lives [12].
Harvard STRIPEDWith the Academy for Eating Disorders and Deloitte Access Economics, June 2020.
We share numbers like these carefully. Statistics can flatten what is actually a very specific, personal experience. But they matter for one reason: if you are struggling, you are not an outlier, and you are not late.
Common questions
Questions people ask before they call
01 What does treatment at Empowered actually involve?
Programming is built around group work, supported by individual therapy, family involvement where it helps, and psychiatric care when that is part of the plan. We work to help reduce the distressing symptoms that brought you to treatment while simultaneously treating the deeper wounds that drive these behaviors. Everything starts with an assessment, and the plan is built from what that assessment finds rather than from a fixed protocol.
02 How do I know whether I need PHP or IOP?
You do not have to work that out on your own. Our clinical team will review your assessment and help place you in the appropriate level of care based on the intensity of your symptoms and availability.
03 What if I am already working with other providers?
This is common and not a problem at all. The team at Empowered will communicate directly with them with your permission and integrate them into the treatment process.
04 How do I know if what I am experiencing is a problem at all?
It can be difficult to tell without a formal assessment. Feel free to contact us and we can assist you in that process free of charge. Some useful signals you may need treatment include: thoughts about food, eating, weight, or your body taking up significant amounts of mental space, behavioral patterns relating to food interfering with major roles in your life such as work or relationships, and whether your behaviors intensify during periods of stress.
05 Do I need to be diagnosed before I call?
No. The majority of people who contact us have never received a formal diagnosis.
06 Will treatment involve dieting or a weight-loss goal?
No. Empowered's approach is weight-inclusive: dietitians build consistent, adequate eating patterns rather than counting calories, restriction is what drives most eating disorder cycles in the first place.
07 What if I have tried treatment before and it did not work?
This is more common than most program pages acknowledge, and it is often a sign that the wrong thing was treated, or that the level of care did not match what was actually needed. If an eating disorder was addressed while an untreated anxiety disorder kept running underneath it, progress tends to be fragile. It is information for planning the next attempt, not a verdict.
08 Can I keep working or going to school?
Often yes. That is much of the point of intensive outpatient care at either practice. Program schedules vary, and we work through the logistics during intake.
09 What about insurance?
We offer a free, no-commitment benefits check: submit your insurance information, we'll let you know exactly what your insurance covers, and explain what that means in plain language before you commit to anything.
Who provides the care
The Empowered clinical team
Care is provided by a licensed clinical team.
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Steffani Roller, LPC
Co-Founder & Clinical Director
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Maryam Mahmoud, LCSW, LCDC
Clinical Director of Transitional Services
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Sydney Kudeviz, LCSW
Therapist
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Megan Swiderski, LCSW
Therapist
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Madeline Thomas, RD, LD
Dietitian
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Reggie Graves, PMHNP-BC
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
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Dr. Yahya Saeed
Medical Director, Psychiatrist
Where to start
You do not need to have language for it yet
Most people who call us do not. And you do not need to have worked out whether your situation counts as serious enough. That is exactly what an assessment is for.
An assessment is a conversation, not a commitment. Our team will talk through what you are dealing with, recommend a level of care, and build a plan around your life rather than the other way around. If you have been looking for eating disorder treatment in Austin, TX and are not sure where to start, this is the place to start.
If you are in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at any hour, or call 911 if you are in immediate danger.
Medical Disclaimer: The information provided on this website is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read on this website. If you are experiencing a medical or psychiatric emergency, please call 911.
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