Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season when decadent food abounds, alcohol flows and diet plan stories hit overdrive. The proliferation of calorie-counting apps meant to help people in their battle to lose weight or better inform them of calorie content presents a risk to people with eating disorders.

Obesity is a $300 billion healthcare problem, but it’s tough to come up with an equivalent calculation for eating disorders. Eating disorders affect about 24 million people but only about one in 10 with anorexia nervosa, bulimia and other eating disorders seeks treatment. The reasons vary from shame to the relatively high cost of residential treatment that can run up to $30,000 per month, and the unwillingness of insurers to cover that expense.  Yet, the age at which people are diagnosed, particularly with anorexia, can predict the likelihood of dying from the disease. So how have mobile health apps addressed this need?

Given the scope of the problem, relatively few apps are geared to people with eating disorders. Many are just shortcuts to content that could be found online. Some of them try to compensate for the fact that, for many people with these cognitive disorders, it is the closest they will come to getting help.

Technology has lagged in the mental health field, particularly for eating disorders, but there are some interesting companies developing ways to help remedy that.

Although it’s well known for its weight management and fitness tracking apps, health IT startup Noom got an NIH grant in October for a two-year pilot study to look at applying its technology to binge eating, according to Tech Crunch.

Noom’s study will be led by eating disorder researcher Tom Hildebrandt at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. The particular Noom Monitor app in the study is not currently on the market and it’s been modified to track binge eating, according to the company’s co-founder Artem Petakov.

Here are some of the mobile health apps currently available:

Emotes for Disordered Eating: It’s essentially a self-monitoring log that allows users to create meal and eating-habit entries, view them later and chart progress. They can email the log entries to themselves, their therapist or others. It’s intended for people who have been or are currently undergoing treatment for eating disorders.

Recovery Record: The clinician-facing app is designed to improve patient interactions and better assess the patient’s progress. Therapists can check in and see how engaged their patients are in real time. It also can send a message to users that their therapist has viewed their diary entries. Clinicians can deliver custom goals and coping tactics, and meal plans are delivered to patients day-to-day to help keep them on track. Users receive rewards, surprises, pictures of baby animals, affirmations and social support to help keep them engaged in their treatment program between visits with a therapist.

Before I Eat: The app is designed to help people reduce binge eating by managing cravings. It contains audio sessions that last from 1 to 10 minutes.  It makes a lot of use of motivational quotes and imagery and users can record reminders to themselves to relax and stay positive. It also has a daily journal and goal management tracker.

[Photo from flickr user Darren Tunnicliff]