Background: This workshop presents an overview of neuroscience research related to eating disorder onset, maintenance, and recovery, and provides new understandings about strategies and skills that can be used to make constructive use of temperament to promote recovery. Presenters will share clinical and personal experiences of utilizing these traits in recovery.
This workshops seeks to present and discuss how the traits identified by neuroscience to be associated with eating disorders can serve positive functions in recovery. This workshop will begin with an relatively brief presentation of an overview of neuroscience research findings related to eating disorder onset and maintenance by a leading neuroscience and eating disorder researcher conducting much of the work being done in this area. We will collectively discuss strategies and skills that people use to make constructive and positive use of their temperament and personality, as well as how this may result in important clues towards developing more effective psychotherapies. The goal of the discussion is to highlight how these traits can be utilized as helpful tools in the recovery process, and how clinicians can help individuals and families in the recovery process apply these strategies. Drs. Warren and Lampert will discuss clinical case examples of how these traits can serve as powerful mitigating factors in achieving successful outcomes. They will provide case examples of these traits, strategies, and skills put to work in the recovery process with clients and in professionals’ own personal experiences, in both early and later recovery. Additionally, as successful eating disorder professionals with personal histories of an eating disorder, both will speak to the impact of understanding and applying personal traits more effectively in the recovery process. With a focus on making the workshop interactive, attendees will be invited to discuss and practice some of these techniques in the workshop to more fully contemplate how enhanced knowledge of these recovery promoting neuroscience related factors can be put to work in their practices with individuals and families. Ultimately, attendees will more clearly conceptualize how traits
This workshops seeks to present and discuss how the traits identified by neuroscience to be associated with eating disorders can serve positive functions in recovery. Recent neuroscience findings have expanded our understanding of how the brain experiences eating disorder behaviors and symptoms differentially across people and allows us to incorporate a fuller understanding of why some people get eating disorders and some don’t, in the face of similar circumstances. Traits such as anxiety, obsessionality, harm avoidance, perfectionism and reward experience are differentially expressed by people with eating disorders, particularly in anorexia nervosa. This doesn’t mean, however, that people with these traits are bound to get an eating disorder or that full recovery from an eating disorder is not possible. In fact, these traits can be utilized as helpful tools in the recovery process, and serve as powerful mitigating factors in achieving successful outcomes. Given that many professionals in the eating disorder field have a personal history of an eating disorder and at the same time are highly successful in their respective fields, we have evidence in our own arena of the impact of neuroscience on recovery. This workshop will present an overview of neuroscience research findings related to eating disorder onset and maintenance and provide new understandings about strategies and skills that people use to make constructive and positive use of their temperament and personality, as well as how this may result in important clues towards developing more effective psychotherapies. We will provide case examples of these traits, strategies, and skills put to work in the recovery process with clients and in professionals’ own personal experiences, in both early and later recovery. Finally, attendees will be invited to discuss how enhanced knowledge of these recovery promoting neuroscience related factors can be put to work in their practices with individuals and families.
Dr. (Croll) Lampert is the Senior Director, Business and Community Development for the Emily Program in Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota. She has written book chapters and articles addressing the evidence/ practice gap in eating disorder treatment, nutritional treatment of eating disorders, body image, and disordered eating. She regularly speaks regionally, nationally, and internationally on eating disorder related topics. Dr. Lampert is Vice-Chair of the Eating Disorders Coalition and a past Board Member for the Academy for Eating Disorders. She also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Walter Kaye was recruited to the UC San Diego faculty from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he was research director of the eating disorder program, and where he received a NIMH senior scientist award. He has an international reputation in the field of eating disorders and is the author of more than 300 articles and publications. Dr. Kaye and his clinical team are treating anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders with an innovative, intensive program that approaches the problem on multiple levels, including medical, psychological, psycho-educational and counseling of the family as key support group.
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Mark J. Warren, MD, MPH
CCED Medical Director Mark Warren, M.D., focuses on bringing the most up-to-date research into evidence-based care. Dr. Warren is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the Academy of Eating Disorders, where he leads the SIG in Males and Eating Disorders. Dr. Warren co-chairs the Academy of Eating Disorders Presidential Task Force for Medical Care and serves on the FEAST Medical Advisory Board and the London-based Succeed Foundation Medical Advisory Board. He has presented extensively at the International Conference on Eating Disorders, The Renfrew Foundation and the Multidisciplinary Eating Disorder Association.
