WCSAD 2011

The Second Annual West Coast Symposium on Addictive Disorders at the La Quinta Resort & Club – La Quinta, CA
June 2-5, 2011This expanded three-and-a-half-day event dedicated to continuing education and networking in the field of addictions, is expected to draw hundreds of regional, national, and international participants, lecturers and faculty. WCSAD combines workshops and seminars on timely industry topics with an unmatched showcase of the industry’s products and services. Your presence at WCSAD will help maintain and increase your competitive edge in the addictions industry. The Rosewood Institute for the training and education of eating disorders will be offering 15 continuing education units. Take a look below to learn more about the curriculum and faculty. Visit www.wcsad.com for registration details.

It Takes a Village: The Complicated Nature of Treating Eating Disorders  & 40 Year Old Male Anorexic Case Study
Steven Karp, DO, FACN, Michelle Klinedinst, MS, CEDS,  Lee Neagle, MA, 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 video 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 an Addiction
Cindy Elms, RD and Caryn Attianese, MA, LPC, NBCC

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.

When Words are Not Enough: Art and Music Therapy for the Heart of the Problem
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. Through “hands on” experiential and case examples, beginning to advanced practitioners will learn tools and skills for non verbal interventions that can be added to traditional therapies.

The Making of a Model: Developmental Model as a Foundation for Treating Eating Disorders
Caryn Attianese, MA, LPC, NBCC and Cindy Elms, RD

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.

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.

The Trauma Connection: Eating Disorders, PTSD, and Comorbidity:
Part 1: Research
Part 2: Treatment
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. Part 2 of the workshop will focus on elucidating an integrated treatment approach for the ED patient with comorbidity using available published practice guidelines. General principles useful in approaching the comorbid ED patient will be outlined and specific recommendations will be explained. In particular, Person’s case formulation approach for use in designing individualized empirically-based treatment plans for patients with complex psychiatric presentations that include trauma, eating disorders, and related psychopathology, will be explained.  Treatment interventions integrated into individualized plans include dialectical-behavior therapy (DBT), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure/response prevention, and pharmacological agents.

DBT Unplugged: Not Dumb Boring Therapy
Libby Neal, MA, LPC and Lee Neagle, MA 

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 adolescents, adults and families who are themselves or have family members suffering with addictions or eating disorders. These didactic and experiential techniques can be integrated into any clinical or school setting.

CE Information

Certified Eating Disorder Specialists- iaedp approves The Rosewood Institute sessions 230, 264, 274, 317, 327, 350, 364,  and 375 for 1.5 hrs each of eating disorders specific continuing education for iaedp certification renewals, and approved supervisor renewals.

Physicians – Please see www.wcsad.com under the Program Tab for more information. The American Osteopathic Academy of Addiction Medicine is sponsoring 12 units of CME that meet the California-licensed physician one-time requirement for education on pain management and the appropriate care of the terminally ill. These courses also offer DOs with AOA Category 1-A CME. (Courses #231, #253, #300)

Registered Dieticians/Dietetic Technicians – Registered – Application has been submitted and pending approval. Please see www.wcsad.com under the Program Tab for more information

Psychologists – This course is co-sponsored by AMEDCO and C4 Recovery Solutions. AMEDCO is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. AMEDCO maintains responsibility for this program and its content and is approved for up to a maximum of 28 CEUs .

Nurses/BRN – Betty Ford Center is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider #13322, for 28 contact hours.

Social Workers – C4 Recovery Solutions, Inc. are approved providers of continuing education by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, provider number PCE 4266. This course meets the qualifications for CE credit for LCSW’s and is approved for up to a maximum of 28 CEUs.

Employee Assistance Professionals – Application is in process and pending approval.

Marriage and Family Therapists – C4 Recovery Solutions, Inc. are approved providers of continuing education by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, provider number PCE 4266. This course meets the qualifications for CE credit for MFT’s and is approved for up to a maximum of 28 CEUs.

Licensed Mental Health Counselors – C4 Recovery Solutions, Inc. are approved providers of continuing education California by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, provider number PCE 4266. This course meets the qualifications for CE credit for MFT’s and is approved for up to a maximum of 28 CEUs.

Alcohol/Drug Educators (CAADE) – Application has been submitted and pending approval. Check www.wcsad.com under the Program tab for more information.

CAADAC – C4 Recovery Solutions, Inc. is approved CEH Provider by CFAAP/CAADAC: Provider Number: 00-85-020-0611 and California  is approved for up to a maximum of 28 CEs for CADC I, CADC II, CCS, CA CCS, LAADC, CCJP, and CCPS.

American Academy of Health Care Providers in the Addictive Disorders – California Approved for 28 CE Credit Hours towards the Certified Addiction Specialist (CAS) credential.