Working with the Body Image Concerns of Young People with ED

About this event

Presented by Dr Katie Hill and Holly McManus (CEED Senior Clinicians), and Gareth Sherring and Julia Quin (CEED Senior Lived Experience Advisors)

Delivered in person, HEC Room, Royal Park Campus, Parkville.

Thurs 2nd November, 2023. 9.00am – 4.30pm

Body Image (BI) concerns and associated distress, are well-established features of eating disorders. Despite this, consumers report current treatment often does not directly address these concerns, and thus exacerbates their feelings of being misunderstood. In addition, parents frequently identify body image distress as a barrier to their ability to take the lead in restoring their child to full health and normal eating. Helping parents and young people understand, feel validated, and tolerate body image distress in the earlier stages of treatment is an important factor in eating disorders treatment and recovery (Sattler, Eickmeyer & Eisenkolb, 2018).

The training will:

- Equip clinicians with a basic understanding of body image and its relationship to eating disorders phenomenology and treatment;
- Aims to help clinicians prioritise and identify the focus of body image interventions throughout the stages of treatment;
- Explore how to support and upskill parents to identify and address signs of body image distress with compassion and firmness;
- Offer ideas to support clinicians to help parents explore their own body experience which may be inadvertently impacting on their expectations and experience of treatment;
- Offer opportunities for clinicians to reflect on their own weight bias and attitudes and how this may influence their therapeutic work.

Intended learning outcomes:

- Competence in the provision of psychoeducation to families about BI and common BI difficulties throughout treatment
- Practical skills in identifying and delivering interventions to proactively address BI distress in order to help the young person and their family progress toward recovery, within the framework of FBT
- Competence to reflect upon and address barriers within teams, self, family and young person in order to promote a clear, responsive and empathic approach to body image distress
- Opportunity to use the perspective of lived experience expertise to inform work with body image