January 2005 Archives

Eating Disorders 2005, the 7th London Conference on Eating Disorders will be held at Imperial College, London, UK from 4th-6th April 2005.

The full programme is now available online.

I am really looking forward to a workshop entitled 'Working with identity and values: An introduction to narrative practice with eating disorders' by Jones, Borden and McCormack, having had my excitement about the use of narrative approaches in eating disorders re-kindled by reading Biting the Hand that Starves You. I'm also keen to attend Claire Tanner and Frances Connan's workshop on 'The secret relationship': Harmful relationships between staff and patients in eating disorder services'. And I like the idea of a training track on conducting research.
All in all it looks like an exciting programme (and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it!)

The University of Minnesota invite applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Psychology to begin Sept 2005. Clinical work focuses on adolescent eating disorders and obesity, as well as other concomitant mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, chronic illnesses, & family problems. The position is 50-60% clinical with the remainder split between seminars & research experiences. Fellowships are one to two years. Stipend is $36,400 + benefits. Applicants must have a Ph.D. or Psy.D. Application deadline is Feb 15, 2005

For further information, contact Dr. Kerri Boutelle on 612-626-2633; boutelle@umn.edu
Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Health, 160 McNamara Ctr, 200 Oak St SE, Minneapolis MN 55455.

The University of Minnesota is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Educator and specifically encourages the application of women and minorities.

Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2005 will run from 6th to 12th February in the UK. This year's theme will be 'Getting Better?'. The UK Eating Disorders Association has lots of further information. To coincide with Eating Disorders Awareness Week, the Eating Disorders Association will be publishing a report on their survey into how treatment services live up to the NICE guidelines.
The USA National Eating Disorders Association also has info on events for Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which, oddly, runs from 27th Feb to 5th March in the US.

New Dawn Recovery Center seeks Clinical Director for our Residential Eating Disorders Program in the Sacramento, CA area. Licensure as a clinical psychologist and two years of experience working with patients with Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa required. At least one year of experience working in a residential or inpatient eating disorders setting preferred. Responsibilities include: hiring and supervising a multidisciplinary team, developing treatment program, conducting diagnostic evaluations, and providing individual, group, family and couples psychotherapy.

The Department of Psychiatry at Michigan State University is recruiting a faculty member for a tenure track position in eating disorders/obesity. Candidates should hold an MD, DO and/or PhD degree. The Department of Psychiatry is a joint department of the College of Human Medicine and the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University. Current research includes fMRI and epidemiology across the life span. The successful candidate will be expected to join other faculty members in the Department of Psychology and around the university in research in eating disorders or obesity. The department are interested in junior and midlevel faculty members who will develop and nurture research skills in a collaborative environment. Michigan State University is the pioneer land-grant institution. It is a Big 10 and AAU university located in East Lansing with a wide variety of cultural, athletic and recreational activities. The school systems are excellent and housing costs are reasonable. Prospective candidates should send letters of interest and a CV to:

Jed Magen DO MS
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Psychiatry
A222 East Fee Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1316

Phone: (517) 53 4363

Fax: (517) 432 9118

Email: magenj@msu.edu

The University of Hertfordshire are running a conference entitled 'Psychological Responses to Eating Disorders and Obesity' on Friday, 10th June 2005 at the Fielder Centre, Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
The conference aims to provide delegates with the opportunity to access current thinking on the use of psychological therapies for the treatment of eating disorders and obesity. Keynote Speakers will be Professor Janet Treasure, Dr Zafra Cooper and Professor Julia Buckroyd
The conference costs £145 including lunch, refreshments and handout pack

To book a place or for more information please contact:
Barbara Scott
Centre for Community Research
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hatfield
Herts. AL10 9AB

Telephone: 01707 286508
E-mail: b.1.scott@herts.ac.uk

I've just discovered a really clear, helpful introduction to binge eating disorder at the National Institutes of Health. Binge eating disorder is a disorder related to bulimia nervosa in which people binge on large amounts of food but do not compensate for this, for example by making themselves sick or using laxatives.

The factsheet covers commonly asked questions about the condition such as 'what is binge eating disorder?', 'how do I know if I have it?', 'what causes it?' and 'how can it be treated?'.

US TV Company PBS screened a documentary a while back about anorexia nervosa. They have now made the full programme available online. You can watch it on either Quicktime or Realplayer and there is also further information about eating disorders available on the site.

I just wanted to let people know of a wonderful book I've just finished reading. It's entitled 'Biting the Hand that Starves You: Inspiring Resistance to Anorexia/Bulimia' by Richard Maisel, David Epston and Ali Borden.

I hope to get a full review of the book up on the site when I have a chance to write one, but in the meantime, I wanted to wholeheartedly recommend this book for professionals, sufferers and carers alike. The authors come from a narrative therapy perspective and much of the book consists of conversations, letters and other material between people with AN/BN and their therapists. The book aims to inspire resistance to anorexia and bulimia by treating it as an embodied 'thing' rather than an illness which the person is suffering from. In this way, they aim to separate the person from the condition so that they can join with carers and therapists to fight AN/BN rather than seeing other people's attempts to help them as attacks upon them, the person with anorexia.

If you're interested in reading more or getting hold of the book, it's available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. I'd also recommend you check out the website associated with the book, www.narrativeapproaches.com which contains many writings by members of an 'anti anorexic/bulimic league' a group of individuals united in their desire to fight anorexia and bulimia.

The Andrew Sims Centre for Professional Development are presenting a one-day training event on practical skills for managing patients with anorexia and bulimia within primary and secondary care settings. The day will be held on 1st March 2005 at the Queens Hotel, Leeds. The keynote speaker is Hubert Lacey

An article in today's Times newspaper discusses Night Eating Syndrome, a rather neglected eating problem in which sufferers binge eat primarily or only at night.

For further reading, have a look at:

Binge eating disorder and the night-eating syndrome
A Stunkard, R Berkowitz, T Wadden, C Tanrikut, E (1996)
Binge eating disorder and the night-eating syndrome, International Journal of Obesity, 20(1):1-6
and
ME Gluck, A Geliebter, T Satov (2001)) Night Eating Syndrome Is Associated with Depression, Low
Self-Esteem, Reduced Daytime Hunger, and Less Weight Loss in Obese Outpatients, Obesity Research 9:264-267

If you're looking for a support group to get help with an eating disorder, Joanna Poppink's excellent site has a very useful listing of groups across the USA and internationally.

The Elisa Project's Sixth Annual Professional Symposium for the Prevention and Treatment of Eating Disorders will be held on 4th March 2005 at Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, Texas, USA.

The meeting is aimed at professionals who wish to learn more about preventing, recognizing, diagnosing, and treating eating disorders (CMEs and CEUs available). The evening before the symposium, The Elisa Project will have the Sixth Annual Community Dinner in Dallas to bring people together in conversation about eating disorders. This year, The Elisa Project has expanded this idea into the National Community Gathering™ which involves people hosting their own gatherings all over the world in coffee shops, homes, restaurants, and university campuses. Their plan is to have over 250 sites gathering on March 3, 2005 to create a huge body of discussion around eating disorders. For more information, visit The Elisa Project website.

Back in December, I spent a pleasant weekend in Bordeaux, where I was lucky enough to see a fascinating, and sometimes disturbing exhibition about food and eating.

The CapcMusée Museum of Contemporary Art is showing the exhibition, entitled 'Hors d'oeuvre: Ordre et Désordres de la Nourriture' (Hors d'Oeuvre: Order and disorder in feeding/nourishment) until 13th Feb 2005. Highly recommended.

I've just come across some useful resources for schema therapy. The main site is at http://www.schematherapy.com/ and contains lots of information on training, books and other publications, cassettes and conferences.

Reinventing Your Life is a slide show developed to explain basic schema therapy principles to the general public and it's a great place to start if you're interested in the approach.

Welcome to the new look EDR. Apologies for the lack of new posts over the Christmas and New Year period, when we were struggling with technical issues relating to the re-launch.

You'll notice one or two changes about the site. One of the main ones is that posting comments now requires a brief registration process. I'm sorry for this, as I know that registering is a bore. However, over the last few months, I have had major problems with spam commenting (A bit like email spam but more public). Some days have come home from a busy day's work to literally thousands of comments advertising unsavory products and services, which all had to be deleted, a depressing and time-consuming process. So this is the solution, for now. There are a few other ways round the problem which I am exploring, so this may not be the solution we end up with.

In the meantime, please do continue commenting on articles if you are interested, or, alternatively, you can always email me with your thoughts.

Thanks for reading EDR and Happy New Year to you all
Lucy
Webmaster, EDR

Sing Lee has let me know that the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Centre, based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong now has a website.

Provided they have a Chinese version of Windows, Chinese people anywhere in the world can access lots of eating disorder related information from the site. You can also make use of a Chinese version of the EAT-26, a commonly used screening tool for eating problems. As far as I know, this is the first Chinese website on eating disorder.

I've also added the site to the page on National and International Eating Disorders Organisations