24th Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders
September 8-11, 2011 at the
Resort & Conference Center at Hyannis
Hyannia, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
The Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders is one of the oldest and largest annual meetings dedicated to continuing education and networking in the field of addictions. In 2009, 793 attendees from 47 states and 10 countries attended. The Symposium combines workshops and seminars on relevant industry topics with an unmatched showcase of the industry’s products and services.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
When Words are Not Enough: Art and Music Therapy Creates Recovery
Libby Neal, MA, LPC and Jessica Hyde-Christenson, MM, MT-BC
Have you ever wondered why your patient who has an eating disorder is not making progress? Are the two of you speaking different languages? Known as alexithymia, the inability to name feelings is a common brain development for someone with an eating disorder. As such, a person with an eating disorder may feel ashamed when unable to simply answer the question, “how are you feeling today”? Non verbal therapies go beneath intellectual defenses to connect with a person’s “deeper knowing” of emotional intelligence. The therapeutic use of art media and musical methodologies offers a kinesthetic, self directed “language” of symbols, sounds and somatic associations that becomes part of a recovery based vocabulary. These new descriptors hold emotional underpinnings of eating disorders related to trauma memories, body image, shame, and road blocks to recovery. This half day “hands on” training will provide case examples that will enhance the didactic and experiential learning so beginning to advanced practitioners can enhance their traditional or non-traditional clinical practice.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Complicated Nature of Treating Eating Disorders
Steven Karp, DO, FACN, Cindy Elms, RD
Eating disorders may be the deadliest psychiatric illness and are often co-occurring with addiction disorders. This comprehensive presentation will review similarities and differences between eating disorders and addictions, allowing beginning to advanced practitioners to gain useful clinical skills. Treating these illnesses simultaneously requires a village approach to therapy including: mental health care professionals, dieticians, doctors, psychiatrists, family members and interventionists. Eating disorder case presentations will illustrate signs and symptoms, medical complications, the role of genetics, factors related to co-occurring addictions and mental illness, cognitive impairment when malnourished, medication options, possible causes, and family related issues. Presented by a psychiatrist and therapists with twenty five years of experience working in eating disorders and addictions, participants will learn a holistic treatment approach with practical applications relevant to this population.
Is Food the Issue: Feeding Recovery for Individuals and Families with Eating Disorders
Cindy Elms, RD
When food is both the medicine and the fix, how can recovery happen? Interrupting eating disorder behaviors while also integrating weight restoration, meal planning and resolution of problem eating patterns is a life saving challenge. Many people with eating disorders attempt to control these issues on their own before they seek professional help. By the time they get to a dietician, a person’s meal plan is limited in food choices and their mind is rigid with rules. Empathic curiosity and attunement to the client’s readiness for change, an eating disorder dietician explores erroneous food beliefs as a means of unraveling the connection between food and addiction. The dietician using this approach will present methods for the client with an eating disorder to meet their nutritional needs in a manner they can tolerate long enough to prove effectiveness and safety. Because there is no “right” way, and each client’s recovery is unique, an individualized nutrition approach normalizes a meal plan with a wide variety of food choices. Case presentations will illustrate many nutritional aspects of eating disorder treatment including the use of food challenges to magnify eating disorder rituals, client progress based on nutrition restoration, solutions to problem eating patterns, and situations where the client may require a feeding tube. Beginning to advanced practitioners will learn skills and tools to integrate into any therapeutic setting.
The Developmental Model as a Foundation for Treating Eating Disorders Part I
Caryn Attianese, MA, LPC, NBCC
The Developmental Model has a long tradition in the treatment of addictions and has powerful applications for eating disorder recovery. Identifying core issues of carried feelings, toxic shame and the effects of trauma is vital to understanding a person’s developmental immaturity, but practitioners who attend this presentation will learn that is only half the treatment process for those with eating disorders. The level of developmental immaturity, in combination with empathic inquiry into a person’s eating disorder, allows practitioner and client to learn together how the eating disorder functions for that person. Beginning to advanced practitioners will learn how to combine these clinical aspects of treatment in order to get out of the battle with the eating disorder, and instead be therapeutically helpful to the person struggling in the deadly grips of the disease. This interactive, “hands on” presentation will give practical tools to support a client’s movement from the wounded ego, adapted ego state to the functional adult ego state, which is relevant to the client whose actions seem inappropriate to their chronological age. Practitioners will learn skills and tools to integrate into any treatment setting.
The Developmental Model as a Foundation for Treating Eating Disorders Part II
Caryn Attianese, MA, LPC, NBCC
This hands-on training will follow Part I of the Making of the Model to provide beginning to advanced practitioners an opportunity to apply their skills. Participants will observe as Demonstrated techniques will provide participants an opportunity to integrate newly formed ideas and skills before utilizing them in their clinical settings.
Saturday September 10, 2011
DBT Unplugged: Not Dumb Boring Therapy
Libby Neal, MA, LPC
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is an effective, evidence based therapy designed to treat individuals with complex, chronic, self harming diagnosis. Unfortunately, people suffering with eating disorders and addictions often refer to DBT as “dumb, boring, therapy”. While the intensive skills may be challenging to understand, they may be more difficult for the person who has an eating disorder to understand as they battle poor brain functioning due to chronic malnutrition. DBT includes valuable skills needed for recovery and the challenge is to make the material immediately accessible, rather than postpone the skills for later into recovery. This presentation will combine humor and eating disorder based anecdotes with the therapeutic skills of core mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. Taught in a hands on manner, beginning to advanced practitioners will learn clear and practical skills for working with adults suffering with addictions or eating disorders. These didactic and experiential techniques can be integrated into any clinical or school setting.
The Trauma Connection: Eating Disorders, PTSD, and Comorbidity
Timothy D. Brewerton, MD, DFAPA, FAED
This workshop will benefit scientists and practitioners who want to understand how trauma and PTSD influence and complicate the course and treatment of eating disorders. Estimates indicate that at least 1 in 3 women in the United States will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, and traumatization is associated with the emergence or worsening of multiple psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses, including substance use disorders. Thus, traumatized individuals are likely to present with complicated clinical presentations for which there is currently no single treatment of choice. Part 1 of this workshop will provide an overview of the research aimed at understanding the relationship between trauma, PTSD, eating disorders, and comorbidity. Taken together, these findings indicate that traumatic experiences and subsequent PTSD are important risk factors in the development of ED’s, particularly bulimia nervosa (BN), anorexia nervosa, binge-purge type, (AN-BP), binge eating disorder (BED) and EDNOS with purging, as opposed to restricting anorexia nervosa (AN-R). ED patients with a history of maltreatment, especially during childhood, are also more likely to have comorbid psychiatric illnesses, including affective, anxiety, substance use, disruptive, somatoform, dissociative and personality disorders, as well as extreme obesity.
Living Out Loud: Psychodrama Sculpts a Recovery
Hunter Taylor, LMLP, LCP
Psychodrama experiential approaches are essential to the eating disorder population because they facilitate a much needed journey into feelings. These techniques have a long tradition of effectiveness for people with eating disorders as they support the difficulty a person with an eating disorder has accessing emotions, which reduces barriers to recovery. The open minded practitioner can use these visual and action oriented techniques to help their client “breakthrough” defenses and provide “a picture” of unresolved core issues. After a brief introduction to psychodrama, practitioners will observe a family sculpt, then learn techniques such as empty chair, roles, inner child, anger discharge approaches, grief work, and the use of props. Important to the discussion will be how to work with trauma without “re-traumatizing” your client. Beginning to advanced practitioners will gain powerful skills needed to integrate these techniques into any setting.
