The most common method of treating these types of phobias is via exposure therapy. These people/ kids have an intense fear of swallowing or choking and need to be exposed to their fears in a safe and controlled way. This is a systematic desensitization approach which is highly effective. A person may be slowly exposed to eating by visiting a restaurant and just observing and slowly move closer to eating by becoming comfortable that they will not choke on their food through observing others.
One of the challenges with children may be that they cannot rationalize as well as adults and typical cognitive-behavioral therapy may not be as effective. The approach that this clinic is taking seems to combine the systematic desensitization approach with trying to get the child comfortable with staff members and get them to trust the staff members versus themselves before trying to eat solid foods again.
It would be interesting to see their success numbers to see if they meet (or exceed) a level of 75% which is seen today using cognitive-behavioral therapy on phobias in adults.
If a person is without nutrition for a long period of time then the person needs to be hospitalized, sedated, stabilized and fed via a feeding tube to get the persons strength back before proceeding to determining root cause and developing a therapy plan of action.
...