The EAT DOC's are an interdisciplinary team specialized in severe eating disorders of infants, toddlers and young children. We work at the Psychosomatic Unit (Head of Unit: Univ.Prof.Dr.med. Peter Jaron Zwi Scheer) of the Department of General Paediatrics (Head of Department Univ.Prof.Dr.med. Wolfgang Muntean) of the University Children’s Hospital (Head of Hospital Univ.Prof.Dr.med. Wilhelm Müller) of Graz in Austria, a small country in the middle of Europe.

EAT-DOC is a research project defined as the Early Autonomy Training DOCumentation, which incorporates the valuable information we collect during the preparation-, treatment- and aftercare-phase of each tube dependent child. The children treated in Graz make up the study group (SG), these of the Net-Coaching program the control group (CG). Scientific analysis of these groups is provided by the ARCHIMED-System, which has been set up in collaboration with the Institute for Biomedical Statistics and Documentation of the Medical University of Graz.

The University Hospital Graz was founded in 1788 (277 beds) by the Emperor Josef II and was expanded in 1912 as at the time largest (1640 beds) and most modern hospital of Europe by the Styrian Government and Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. A close link between clinical work, research and teaching has been implemented from the beginning and is much appreciated by patients and students.
Today, nearly 100 years later, the clinical part (1554 beds) is run by the KAGes in cooperation with the Medical University of Graz, a teaching and research centre of international reputation for thousands of students, research fellows (3 Nobel prize winners: Fritz Pregl, Julius Wagner von Jaurregg and Otto Loewi) and teachers.

The Psychosomatic Unit of the Pediatric Department was founded in 1981 to help children with physical and psychological problems demanding professional expertise in any field of medicine in combination with any psychodynamic or developmental issue. It is equipped with 8 beds and 4 parent-child-units. A team of physicians, nutritionists, psychologists, psychotherapists, speech-therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, teachers, certified social paedagogues, welfare workers, unpaid and invaluable dedicated trainees as well as the whole highly and specifically trained nursing staff take care of our patients 356 days 24 hours nonstop. The team is fluent in German and English, offers sufficient skills in French, Dutch, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Hebrew, Swiss and Italian too, and can get interpreters for any given language needed. Apart from the inpatient clinic with a yearly average bed occupation higher than 90%, our staff runs an outpatient clinic, with about 1500 patients a year.

Our staff is specialized on supporting the infantile healing and recovery process by paying as much attention to the mental processing of the illness as to the necessary somatic topics. A specific challenge are the nearly endemically increasing cases of specific feeding and eating behaviour problems, especially in infancy for what a special therapy program has been developed. Further fields of attention are children and adolescents with ADHD, behavioural problems in their environment, autism, anorexia, adiposity, unclear somatic illnesses, somatic illnesses with psychological background, sleeping disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and much more. Psychological therapy is provided as individual therapy, group therapy or as family therapy.

Clinical and scientific cooperation
For our clinical and scientific activities the interdisciplinary cooperation with other professional groups, clinics and institutes is significant. This involves experts from psychology, educational science, psychotherapy, ergotherapy, orthopaedagogy, early intervention, child protection service, nutrition consultation, biology and other specialties. We work in conjunction with the departments of pediatric surgery, physiology, radiology, anaesthesiology, general and experimental pathology and all other clinics involved with the care of children. Close cooperation with our nursing staff as well as the commitment of our administrative staff are considered exemplary and essential.
Internationally we are members of the Austrian American Association with a very long tradition of scientific exchange and student and postgraduate exchange with the paediatric hospital of Philadelphia(USA) and with many other well known large medical centres of the world. Furthermore we are members of the Austrian society of Paediatrics, the OEVK (Austrian section of the European Society for Child Psychotherapy), the WAIMH (World association of infant mental health) and in the board of GAIMH (German speaking association of infant mental health) and the AACAP (American Assoc. of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry).

Contact
Psychosomatic Division
Department for General Pediatrics
University Children's Hospital Graz
Auenbruggerplatz 30
A-8036 Graz
Tel.: 0043 (0)316 385 - 83756 or 12348
www.kinderpsychosomatik.at (German)