Question:
Has anyone not passed their Psych eval because they did not eat enough?

I had my eval today and was told that I did not eat enough to have the surgrey. She thought that I was miminizing the amount of food that I ate. She recomended therpy and not surgery. She said that she would only clear me if one of the therpist that she recomended contacted her. After I had been going to therpy for a while. Has this happened to anyone? Did anybody get approved after seeing a therpist? If so how long did it take?    — lawanda101 (posted on April 24, 2001)

April 24, 2001
I was in counseling and on drug therapy for an eating disorder for a year before I looked into surgery. This was a coincidence as I had not yet heard of the gastric bypass but I feel it helped to show that I had tried everything with no success.
   — Lisa B.

April 26, 2001
This strikes me as ridiculos for several reasons. Most importantly, why does the therapist think that the amount of food you eat is a psych issue at all. I don't think a psychologist is trained in nutrition! Secondly, therapy may help you a lot, but it is not a cure for morbid obesity, so I think she is showing an anti-surgery bias. Does your surgeon require you to have a psych approval for surgery, or does your insurance company require it? If it is your surgeon, I would talk directly to him about what this psych has said. He may have you do another eval with a different psych, or he may decide to ignore her opinion all together. In my experience, WLS surgeons are not too impressed with psychologist opinions anyway. Good Luck!
   — Lynn K.