Prevention: Can Early Lessons Lead to a Delineation of an Alternative Model? A Critical Look at Prevention with Schoolchildren

Prevention programs in the area of eating disorders, designed for schoolchildren, have tended to cover overlapping content areas and follow didactic paradigms of intervention with limited documented success. A critical analysis of the domains of knowledge development, paradigms of intervention, social prejudice, and fund allocation lead to several suggested revisions in school programs for eating disorders. School programs will be enriched by relying on children's and adolescents' authority regarding their lived experience and by attending to relational and contextual factors. It is hoped that broadening the scope of prevention programs will lead to enhanced efficacy.