Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for BED and BN

                                                                                                       

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for BED and BN

Description

Binge eating disorder (BED), characterized by binge eating without compensatory behaviors and bulimia nervosa (BN), characterized by binge eating with compensatory behaviors, affect approximately 5% of individuals world-wide.  Emotional eating, the tendency to eat in response to affect, occurs in BED and BN but in non-eating disordered individuals as well.   Dialectical Behavior Therapy is an evidence-based treatment for BED, BN and emotional eating.  Unfortunately, many therapists do not have adequate training in this model to be able to effectively offer this treatment.  Moreover, outside of large metropolitan centers, access to evidence-based treatments for BED, BN or emotional eating are limited.   

The current workshop will present two researched models of using DBT to treat emotional eating, binge eating and bulimia.  The first model (Safer, Telch & Chen, 2009) proposes using a 20-week, two-hour outpatient group therapy format for clients with binge eating disorder (BED) or bulimia nervosa (BN). The second model (Safer, Adler & Masson, 2018), which will be reviewed more briefly, proposes the use of a Guided Self Manual which may be offered in person or via teletherapy.   

During this 8-hour workshop participants will receive the theoretical and practical information necessary to incorporate these models into clinical practice.   

Through a combination of didactic presentations, experiential exercises, and clinical vignettes, participants will learn: 

  • The theoretical foundation and treatment rationale for using DBT with clients presenting with BED and BN
  • Participants will be made aware of specific DBT skills that have been adapted to address binge eating behaviors. 
  • Mindfulness: cultivating nonjudgmental awareness to interrupt reactive eating patterns
  • Emotion Regulation: reducing vulnerability to negative emotional states and building emotional resilience
  • Distress Tolerance: surviving intense emotional experiences without using eating disorder behaviors
  • Strategies for behavioral chain analysis, diary card use, and promoting generalization of skills outside of session
  • Approaches to enhance treatment engagement, including motivational strategies, commitment building
  • Discuss the affect regulation model of binge eating 

Audience
This training is ideal for clinicians seeking to enhance their ability to apply DBT principles and interventions in the treatment of adult clients with binge eating and bulimia symptoms. Emphasis will be placed on practical skill development, clinical decision-making, and tailoring DBT to real-world practice settings. 

Date/Time
April 7-8, 2026, 1-5pm ET via Zoom*

*This didactic training is geared towards live participation and will not be recorded.
**The didactic portion of this training does not offer any certifications.


REGISTER HERE

About OUR COURSE PRESENTERS

Anita Federici is a Clinical Psychologist and the Owner of The Centre for Psychology and Emotion Regulation. She serves an Adjunct Faculty position at York University and is a distinguished Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED). She has provided more than 400 lectures, workshops, and invited talks on eating disorders, Multidiagnostic Eating Disorders (MED-DBT), and DBT. She works extensively on an international level with hospitals and community organizations offering team training, implementation support, and program development with a special focus on creating differential care pathways for clients who do not respond to traditional treatment approaches. Her work has been presented at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and invited book chapters. Her co-authored book on MED-DBT will be available through Guilford Publishers in 2025.

Lucene Wisniewski, PhD, FAED is a clinician, trainer, and researcher whose interests center around using empirically founded treatments to inform clinical practice.  Lucene, an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, has taught more than 150 workshops, lectures and presentations on Cognitive Behavioral and Dialectical Behavior Therapies internationally and has over 40 publications in peer reviewed journals and invited book chapters.  Lucene has been elected fellow, has served on the board of directors, and as the co-chair of the Borderline Personality Disorder special interest group of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED).  In 2013 the AED awarded Lucene the Outstanding Clinician Award to acknowledge her contribution to the field of eating disorder treatment. She is the owner and founder of The Center for Evidence Based Treatment Ohio (www.cebtohio.com), which offers therapy, training and consultation in evidence-based approaches to mental health conditions via traditional and teletherapy platforms.

Dr. Debra L. Safer specializes in treating eating and weight disorders. She obtained her MD from U.C. San Francisco and completed her residency as well as a post-doctoral fellowship in eating disorder intervention research within the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She has practiced psychiatry for more than 20 years. Dr. Safer is the Co-Director of the Stanford Adult Eating and Weight Disorders Program. Her research and clinical work in eating disorders and obesity focus on improving patient outcomes by developing and conducting clinical intervention trials to establish evidence-based treatments. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles, books, and book chapters, and presented her work both nationally and internationally. In addition to her research on clinical interventions and medication trials for patients with eating disorders, other research interests include designing interventions for post-bariatric surgery patients, the use of virtual reality in treating eating disorders, and evaluating the outcomes of evidence-based treatments for eating disorders in “real world” settings.

Course Pricing

Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3
Member $399 $219 $75
Non-Member $499 $279 $90
Student/ Post-Bac Member $199 $99 $40
Student/Post-Bac Non-Member $299 $149 $60

ADD-ON OPTION: Participate in the DBT Learning Collaborative (Registration Limited) 

Following the didactic course, our course presenters will host a 12-sesion DBT Learning Collaborative (meeting every other week for 6 months). Learning Collaborative participants will have the opportunity to receive consultation on ongoing clinical cases and to ask questions of the presenters and other attendees. To deepen their learning, Learning Collaborative participants will submit brief consultation reports to the Learning Collaborative team, including an update on therapy adherence, patient progress, and future treatment plan. The Learning Collaborative is a special opportunity for licensed professionals from any country who have a clear plan for putting DBT into immediate practice. Certificates of completion will be issued at the conclusion of the Learning Collaborative for those who attend >80% of the sessions and participate actively with case presentations. 

Audience
Licensed professionals from any country who have a clear plan for putting DBT into immediate practice.

Prerequisites
To ensure all learners start on the same page, attending the didactic workshop is a pre-requisite for participation. AED learning collaboratives are considered educational consultation and explicitly not supervision.  Our consultants provide educational opinions on cases. Clinician’s institutions do the billing and use their own (or their institution’s) malpractice insurance.  Thus, all participants in the learning collaborative must be licensed clinicians with active malpractice insurance. Unlicensed trainee therapists will be considered on a case-by-case basis if the trainee is working under the license and malpractice insurance of an outside supervisor who accepts liability for the trainee’s cases.

Date/Time
12 sessions meeting every Tuesday for 3 months, beginning April 14, 2026.  The full list of dates will be shared soon.

Application Process
To preserve the individual attention provided in the Learning Collaborative, attendance will be limited to 12 participants each. Applications will be reviewed and those eligible to participate in the course will be sent information to register on a first-come, first-served basis.


APPLY HERE

Learning collaborative add-on Pricing

Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3
Member $399 $219 $75
Non-Member $499 $279 $90
Student/ Post-Bac Member $199 $99 $40
Student/Post-Bac Non-Member $299 $149 $60